In my last article I talked about using a mobile website as a content or advertising medium. Once you have a mobile site, you would naturally be keen to drive traffic to it.  Discoverability is a significant challenge in the mobile market today.

Accessing a mobile website on a phone can be quite cumbersome.  Almost all new mobile phones are released now with a mobile web browser resident on the handset.  Each handset is different, but usually there’s a menu item or button called ‘Web’ or ‘Internet’ that the user can select to load up the browser. 

To enter a URL you usually have to navigate through several menu options (eg. Bookmarks, Edit Bookmarks, Enter New Bookmark), then type in a URL using the mobile keypad. Although new handsets like the iPhone make this process far more intuitive, finding all the necessary dots & symbols on some handsets can be clunky & tiresome and many people don’t make it that far.

Given this barrier, solutions for the discovery of mobile websites are paramount, at least until more mobile phones are intuitive for URL entry & uptake of these devices reaches the mass market.  

Carrier Portals

The most common way that mobile website are discovered is through their Carrier’s content portal.  Each of Telstra, Optus, 3 & Vodafone operate a mobile content portal, on which selected content & information services are listed.  In many cases, users are unaware of any other way to access mobile content from their phone.

For the content owner, being included on one or more of these portals can be a challenge.  Each carrier operates a different policy for management of their portal.  Some require a revenue share of profits from the mobile site, others pay a fee to brands & content that complement their vision, while others include only content that they have commissioned & developed internally or with business partners.  

As an example, Telstra has recently divided their mobile portal into two sections labelled ‘Home’ and ‘Web’.  The mobile content and sites on the ‘Home’ tab have been endorsed by Telstra, and are free to browse (ie. there are no data charges for accessing any content), whereas sites linked to from the Web tab are independent and users will face data charges for browsing.

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In the current Australian market, inclusion in some way on a carrier portal is almost a guarantee of usage & awareness but as the market becomes saturated with content offerings, and ‘slots’ on portals are increasingly difficult to acquire, content owners are becoming more innovative in their attempts to attract usage.  

Mobile Search

Not unlike the mobile industry today, In the very early days of internet, people would find websites by visiting portals.  Usually these portals were the homepage of their Internet Service Provider (ISP) and included lists of links to recommended websites.   Before too long, users discovered that there was a world of content outside this “walled garden” and began exploring the wider web.  Search made that possible.  These days, it would be almost unthinkable to attempt to find ‘web content’ without using a search engine like Google.

The mobile web is currently a little like the early days of internet.  All of the major search engines have a mobile service and people are beginning to realise they can search the mobile web, just as they currently search the ‘normal’ web.  Try Google Mobile by entering http://m.google.com.au in your mobile browser.

In Australia the major carriers are embarking on relationships with search engines and implementing search on their portals.  For example Optus makes Google available on their mobile portal so that users can carry out mobile searches without having to leave the portal and enter in the Google URL.  Telstra also recently signed a deal with Yahoo to deliver Yahoo results in searches made from the BigPond mobile portal. 

As in the online industry, it is possible to use Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to buy mobile keywords, so that customers will see your text ad above mobile search results.  It is early days for Mobile SEM in Australia, but local publishers including CarsGuide, Fairfax & Sensis already buy mobile SEM keywords using Google, and traffic from mobile specific ad networks like AdMob (more on this in a future article).

Mobile Banners

Increasingly, local advertisers are testing the water with mobile banner campaigns.  A mobile banner behaves exactly the same way as a simple online banner, in that a clickable graphic is served onto a mobile website.  <
/span>When clicked on, the banner takes the user to a mobile destination site. NineMSN regularly serves mobile banners on their mobile sites, including  http://news.ninemsn.com.au/mobile/ (the 9 News mobile site).

Depending on campaign goals, the click through destination could be a permanent mobile site (such as http://mobile.whereis.com.au) to which the advertiser is attempting to drive traffic.  Alternatively the destination could be a campaign site which has been set up specifically.  Peugot recently ran a campaign whereby mobile banners were served on NineMSN’s mobile network.  The banners clicked through to a mobile campaign site for the Peugot 308.

Buying media for a local mobile banner campaign remains fairly fragmented.  Each of the carriers controls access to its own mobile customers, and although NineMSN performs something of a aggregator role as well as serving ads on their own network of mobile sites, each o
f the networks prefers to encourage advertisers to use only their mobile properties. Melbourne startup MDigital now offers a mobile media buying aggregation service, and my own business Mobilist can also help out in this area.  Before making mobile media decisions I highly recommend looking into all of the options as no single network can offer comprehensive coverage of the Australian market. 

SMS Shortcodes

Another way to cut out the tedious typing of a URL into a mobile phone browser is to send users a link via SMS. Many larger companies with mobile sites have established an SMS shortcode to simplify discoverability for new users.  

Usually the shortcode number is listed on a website, or included in an ‘offline’ advertisement (eg. magazine, bus shelter,  billboard etc).  Users send an SMS to the shortcode and receive a link back instantaneously via SMS.   Eg. to save entering http://cleo.mobi you could instead text the word ‘cleo’ to 19 34 34.and receive an SMS response containing a clickable link to the mobile version of Cleo Magazine.

The AIMIA ‘You can on a Mobile’ campaign website lists URLs and SMS Shortcodes for accessing many local mobile sites. (http://www.youcanonamobile.com.au/top-sites.html)

NOTE: This  article was originally published on Digital Ministry in April 2008, but has since been moved or deleted (?)  I have reposted it below so that it will have a permanent bookmark. 

NOTE: some details changed to update facts / links etc since April 08