The power of Mobile Web Apps

Two articles last week caught my eye to inspire this week’s blog.

1.    A report conducted by Arc Worldwide, a marketing services firm, found that half of shoppers consult their phones while shopping. The report surveyed 1,800 cell phone users and studied 30 shoppers while they were out buying goods.

2.    A report from a study, Dial 2011: Navigating Digital Platforms by Arbitron and Edison Research has found that more than half of the adult population in America now has a profile on the popular social networking website, Facebook, with half of them accessing Facebook via their mobile phones.

Whilst I am a huge advocate for the benefits of companies delivering native mobile apps (apps built in the native language of the phone, such as Objective C for IPhone, Java for Android and J2ME for Blackberry), the simple truth is that many companies are unable to justify the costs, resources, infrastructure and R&D to dedicate for mobile app development, even with such cost coming down over the last several years.

The other truth is that the majority of users out there still don’t have Smartphone’s to access these native apps.

Native apps are brilliant in delivering an interactive user experience (integrate into the features of the handset, such as GPS, camera, contacts etc), where a user clicks a single button that sends off a request to access content from multiple data sources (ERP, CRM, web etc) and delivers this mash-up of information on a single screen that can then be drilled down into.

But what if all the information you want your clients to use is already available on your website and you want to make accessing this information easy? What is your strategy is to engage socially with your customers to increase your brand awareness and loyalty?

This is where a mobile web app can deliver to your company strategy.

There are web app solutions, such as mobi sites or the ability to build web apps using HTML5 that allow businesses to “mobilise” their websites. This means that accessing information from a standard website is clean and easy to read and navigate on mobile phones.

The challenge is that with mobi websites a new website is created that is designed specifically for mobile phones. With HTML5, it is still an evolving technology that has yet to receive a global standard, which still requires a developer to create the web app.

This means that companies are again faced with allocating costs, resources, infrastructure and R&D to re-engineer what they have already developed with their website.  There is also a lack of ability to integrate into the features of the handset, such as GPS, camera, contacts etc.

There are alternatives to meet these challenges, new companies have entered the market offering a platform approach to extending your company’s website content and information to the masses, quickly easily and cost effectively. Some even  have the ability to integrate with your phones features.

For example, Blink Mobile deliver a PaaS (Platform as a Service), which is a high-level platform-oriented approach to rapid and flexible mobile deployment of existing services and the creation of new, mobile-specific web apps that require no coding, developing, infrastructure or R&D to deploy your apps. Your existing web administrator who knows some HTML and the structure of your web site can use the web based tools to deliver the mobile web app that you want.

Try the following test to see what I mean.

From you mobile type in or click the link to Brisbane City Councils website: http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/ 

Now try navigating around this website form your mobile, not too easy is it.

Now from you mobile type in or click the link to Brisbane City Councils website that Blink created: myanswers.mobi/Brisbane

The website looks and feels like a mobile app, is it easy to navigate and displays the information quickly with minimal screen taps.

Now try this example

From you mobile type in or click the link to University of Newcastle website: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/

Now from you mobile type in or click the link to University of Newcastle website that Blink created: http://www.myanswers.mobi/uon

            Example 1                                                              Example 2   

    
 In a matter of days or weeks you can go from example 1 to example 2, with no coding, no re-engineering, no additional infrastructure and with complete control over the  look and feel of your web app.

If you want a cost effective method of delivering existing website  content and information into the palm of ANY person using a mobile phone with an internet browser, then you don’t need to spend all that time and money on a native mobile app solution may be overkill for your business.

Choosing the right partner with a good quality platform approach can deliver this to you.