Friday, August 10, 2012

What is Mobilization? Mobile Optimization?

Unless you live in a cave, you might have heard new buzz around "Mobilization of websites", "Mobile optimized website", "Mobile Site", and "iPhonized" in the past year or so. You might be wondering what is all this about and whats in it for you?

There were lot of technologies around mobile phones which were in the market for quiet a longtime. You might have heard about Microsoft's mobile platform few years back, which was specifically targeted for Mobile application in Windows mobile operating system. This mobile market segment was not given much importance or excitement up until 3G mobile network (3G allows simultaneous use of speech and data services and higher data rates) was specifically used for Mobile phone data communication. Apple's introduction of iPhone and Google's NexusOne with mobile based open source operating system Android, for mobile devices and other devices like Palm pre, Motorola Droid etc complemented the model. All these Smart phones combined with 3G network technology made a huge impact in the Mobile Computing world.

These introductions of the new so called "Smart Phones" are like a mini computer which you can keep it in your pocket or bag and has its own unique advantages which can do almost all the things a computer can do. In some cases, it is much better as it uses GPS navigation and location specific applications, which are even better than computers or laptops. During mid Feb 2010, Mobile World Congress held a conference in Barcelona, Spain, in which there were high enthusiasm and excitement from smart phone manufactures about the future of Mobile technology. One of the participating companies Microsoft mentioned that they were going to revamp and refocus on mobile technology. So everybody are on it. When all these things are happening around you and you also notice everyday that more and more people around you buried in their phones, you might be wondering why all these buzz around this Mobile technology and what is in it for me or my business?

Yes, there are lots of things that will impact you if you are a small business or business owner with a website or wanted to have your own web presence in this World Wide Web.Let me tell you a little history behind all these changes when information revolution happened in late 1990s and early 2000s, it made lot of Business to move their business process towards internet and internet has become a backbone for everything happening around us. More and more businesses wanted to have their web presence and web site has become a default for any business.

So now you have millions and millions of websites that are accessed by every one with a click of a button and all these search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, and social media networks like Facebook, tweeter,etc have information available where ever you are and when ever you wanted. Initially there were desktop computers with dial-up modem which slowly progressed to broadband and then to "WiFi". If you want to access information at anytime you have to have a laptop with a WiFi access. You have to carry your laptop, where ever you go, but that is not very convenient and not very cost effective. This problem is solved by latest Mobile technologies. Mobile phone gives you the comfort of always connected with 3G or other sophisticated mobile networks so that you can access information when ever you wanted as long as you have a signal in your phone. With this change in technology, it provides a new opportunity for all businesses.

According to estimates, there are 2 times more mobile users than internet users at any kind and 3 times more mobile phones than personal computers or laptops. You will be losing something unless you "wakeup" and think about these changes and act on it. If you are a business owner or have websites, this is the time to either "Mobilization" or "Optimize the site for Mobile phones". If you don't, then you may be losing customers for sure. More and more people are on the go and they look for information with their mobile phones. The beauty about these smart phones are that it comes with GPS enabled devices and if you want, you can find out where exactly the customer is in and that is a treasure for online marketing.

Lot of Marketing research shows that location based search and location based marketing will increase exponentially and not only that, there is a cost advantage by using mobile phones than buying laptop and having broadband access. Also people are moving towards mobile phones and not having those traditional landlines and so ultimately every one will carry a Smart Phone in the next few years. So Mobilization of your website is a must. One would think that their site looks OK in iPhone, but that may not be true. You will understand what I mean when you see 2 different versions of the site, one optimized for mobile phones and another is a regular site optimized for Browse in your mobile phones. The user experience on a regular website in a mobile phone might be quite frustrating.

There is a misconception about what is "Mobile optimization" or "Mobilization of websites". Some think that they have to hire a iPhone developer to develop a iPhone app or hire some one to write a Android application that can be run on phones which uses android operating systems. That is not TRUE. All you need to do is to optimize the site to look good in Mobile phones. These mobile friendly sites will be easy to use in a mobile phone and customers will like it. For example, if you go to CNN, they have a separate site for mobile phones and a site fxcor regular browsers. That is called mobile optimization and at the same CNN, they have a CNN Money iPhone app that is an iPhone app that you can download from Apple's iTunes or from CNN.

So don't wait for your competitor to take advantage. Think and act on it to get your site "Mobile Optimized" or "Mobilized".


Article Source: EzineArticles.com

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