Marketing Decoded

How frustrating is it to have to scroll through pages on your Smartphone to get to the content you want when a retailer is advertising something to you? Irritating and stupid. The marketer in me gets annoyed when retailers I like just send me emails with product offers and I have to fight my way through a bunch of screens to figure out what it’s for. Sure, I hear you. I know I can click on the website button or sometimes (like in J Crew’s case) there’s a supposed ‘mobile phone friendly version of this email’.

Better now: there’s .mobi. The mobi standard is the first attempt to set a standard for what a mobile site should look like. The standards are designed for easier viewing on the smaller screens of Blackberrys and iPhones. Screens are designed to be viewed as wider rather than narrower so you don’t have to scroll down. Options to purchase stuff are fewer, using drop down lists. Users will NOT be overwhelmed with data: something that costs users money on cell phones.

But is .mobi even necessary? Maybe not. Businesses can use the .mobi standards and create better consumer-friendly smartphone sites. Many companies are just adding an ‘m’ to their site and creating a smartphone friendly version e.g., m.google.com. In the long run, however, apps are the way that most businesses will go. The .mobi standard is just a stepping stone to help businesses build their way to a more smartphone-friendly way to access their website…and ultimately, sell their stuff.  It’s just another channel for accessing product.