Thoughts about launching mobile internet sites in Australia

User demographics

Some of the research gives conflicting stats but according to the CCi Digital Futures Report - The internet in Australia approx 4.2 million Australians (out of the 21 million population) could access the internet through handheld devices. The number who actually do on a daily basis though could be lower.

The people using mobile internet are younger - A quarter of the mobile net audience is aged 15-24, compared to 16% for the PC [Nielsen Online] . These users will likely be using the internet on their phones as they are on the move so maybe time-poor and be very focused on a particular goal, they're not interested in browsing around so much. They have different motivations to users on their PC internet, so mobile site (msite) design shouldn't be treated as a 'mini-web'.

Data plan costs

Data plans are more expensive than in UK or US but tariffs are coming down. You can easily get 1Gb for ~$30/month

now, although this still isn't as good as the UK t-mobile 'web and walk' all you can eat for 7.50 GBP! Until Aus gets unlimited plans msites will still need to consider download costs in the design. I think this is really important when it comes to advertising. Who wants to waste their data plan downloading a big ad image?!

Handsets

Handsets are becoming easier to use. AS well as the i-phone there are many smartphones and other web enabled phones available in Australia which can give a good user experience. When designing an msite there is a business decisions that needs to be made around which types of handsets you want to support.

It is possible to design sites which will 'fit' to the majority of handsets, and implement handset detection functionality on entering the site, but is the cost of this really justified? Will those with lower spec phones really be likely to use the msite or have a data plan anyway? Designing for i-phone definetly has marketing advantages because then you can get into providing iphone applications too and be listed on the iphone App Store.


Relevant site content

Customer data is not given out so freely by telcos. The MSISDN is the telephone number linked to a sim card in a mobile phone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSISDN if you can get hold of this number you can identify who owns the phone and personalise the msite accordingly. In some countries (US and UK I think) you can get this number but in Aus the telcos won't due to privacy laws, although this may change in the future. You can however work out where is user is based on the location of the tower their mobile is using. This can be great for localising a site, making it
quicker to use and more relevant.

Marketing

Premium sms channels are being used in Australia by some companies. For example the user can send a premium cost sms to recieve access to a certain site to enter a compeition or get information. The company then gets a share of the cost of the message with the telco provider. Proximity marketing can be used to promote sites by sending a message to bluetooth enabled phones which pass by. There are some legal issues around 'opt ins'.

Walled gardens

In Australia a lot of the telcos operate walled gardens where the user doesn't always have to use their data plan if they remain on sites within the 'garden'. In certain cases telcos may even pay the site for their content being available 'on-deck'within their walled garden.

Partnering with a telco in this way could initially help to raise the profile of the new msite, which is important as users do not necessarily access msites through search engines at the same level as they do on the internet.

Business benefits of launching a mobile site?

For certain companies having a mobile version of their website can give big advantages:

• they have access to their customers while they are on the move, so increasing conversion opportunities (need to be careful that this isn't cannibalising traditional web traffic though)
• they can earn additional revenue through premium sms charges
• they can put ads on their mobile site (although this should be done with caution to avoid longer load times)
• it is a good story for their brand if the site is done well and takes off

Aus mobile sites

The autralian based msites working well at the moment are either related to be on the move or very targeted towards a specific goal:

• find information based on location e.g. city search, weather , transport
• catching up with news e.g. Sydney Morning Herald ,
• searching for jobs, cars, or homes e.g. drive
• there are some niche ecommerce sites starting to appear too e.g. Ready flower (could be useful for the forgetful on Feb 14th!)

Where sites are becoming more transactional, to make the msite process easier some sites are requiring sign up through their internet site, then simply log in to the msite where your information is prepopulated. If the user is not already signed up, the msite can ask for the minimal amount of info necessary to complete the purchase.

So we need msites to...

• Have a purpose which is useful to be able to access on the move / away from PC
• Be relevant to user and quick to use through Personalisation, Customisation, Localisation
• Be simple to navigate and have fast loading pages using the targeted handsets / platforms
• Provide monetization opportunties for the site through advertsing or marketing

Google searchwiki

The Google search wiki is interesting, if you’re logged in to a Google account, it lets you rerank the results of your search and write comments against each link. The reranking is only logged to your personal account, but anyone logged into Google can see your comments.

E.g. if you search for ‘tickets’ then click ‘see all search wiki comments’ at the bottom of page, you can see what other people have been writing about ticketing sites.


I don't think Google would take notice of people’s personal re-rankings or comments within their algorithms right now but it is a cool feature and will be interesting to see how it grows. Could it learn your personal result preferences and start ranking results to be more relevant to the individual?

Running tools

Loving mymaprun functionality with its mapping tool, my saved maps, map search, my training log and the community. It has made my exercise a lot easier to keep track off, I used to do a lot of this through spread sheets which took ages and didn't look half as cool.

(Obviously my running still needs some work, the knees are still my excuse!)

But, the display ads are really starting to bug me (full screen in some cases) and login has a painful amount of 'explanation text'. It's not that complicated is it? Also, I got to this page from a friend request sent to my email, so can't you work out who I am?

Aus food sites

I've found the site taste.com.au really useful recently. It's well designed and they seem to have thought of it all...


Not only does it aggregate recipes from a whole load of different recipe/food sites, but also:

• Recipe reviews by users
  
• news
• cooking tips
• info about ingredients
• info about specific cuisine types
  
• forums to chat to other foodies
• member login where you can save recipes you like, add your own recipes to your 'folder', save a recipes ingredients to build a shopping list
• Recommends similar / related recipes
  

Certain recipes are grouped to make it easier to browse for specific types like collections of side dishes, turkish food... I particularly enjoyed looking through the barbecue collection and am planning to try the prawn skewers this weekend - yum!
I also looked at cuisine.com.au, I prefer the more subtle look and feel and its groupings and search are simpler and make a bit more sense, but doesn't have the same level of functionality with the member login, user reviews and forums which Taste has.

Love the wine matching tool though!

Australian media ownership

A high percentage of Australian media websites are owned by just a few large media corporations. This seems to be much more so than in the UK or US.

Some of the big players are:

News Ltd, the Australian part of News Corp (Rupert Murdoch).
* 68 per cent of the capital city and national newspaper market;
* 77 per cent of the Sunday newspaper market;
* 62 per cent of the suburban newspaper market;
* 18 per cent of the regional newspaper market.

It's major digital publications through http://www.newsdigitalmedia.com.au/ are:
- http://www.news.com.au/ National news
- http://www.realestate.com.au/ Housing classifieds
- http://carsguide.news.com.au/ Cars classifieds
- http://www.careerone.com.au/ Careers classifieds
- http://www.truelocal.com.au/ Local business search
- http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/ National news
- http://www.taste.com.au/ Recipes (I love this one!)
- http://www.vogue.com.au/ Australian Vogue
and a whole load of other national and regional newspaper and lifestyle sites.


Fairfax
* 21 per cent of the capital city and national newspaper market;
* 22 per cent of the Sunday newspaper market;
* 17 per cent of the suburban newspaper market;
* 16 per cent of the regional newspaper market.

It's major digital publications through http://www.fairfax.com.au/ are:
- http://www.smh.com.au/ Sydney Morning Herald Regional newspaper
- http://www.watoday.com.au/ Western Australian Regional newspaper
- http://www.domain.com.au/ Housing classifieds
- http://www.drive.com.au/ Cars classifieds
- http://mycareer.com.au/ Careers classifieds
- http://www.rsvp.com.au/ Dating
- http://www.afr.com/ Financial news
And many other news, entertainment, classifieds, travel, specialised careers, and lifestyle sites.

Seven Network
owns a number of free and pay TV channels, also has a partnership with yahoo known as Yahoo7 http://au.yahoo.com/ through which you can access all Yahoo products.

PBL
Owns the 9 TV network and also has a stake in Sky News. It has a partnership with Microsoft Nine MSN http://ninemsn.com.au/ through which you can access all of the MSN products.

Figures here and more info including telecommunication and internet service companies can be seen here.

The websites developed or bought by these companies are definitely going to have more financial backing and economies of scale than independent startups. I'm wondering how they manage the balance between advertising opportunities and the user experience, how they're affected by the economic climate right now and what kind of product development processes they use. Would be interesting to hear what it's like to work inside these companies...

Australian eCommerce

I am getting a little frustrated with the lack of decent ecommerce sites in Australia. There's even no Amazon - where do I get my books from now?!

A couple of good (bad) examples of this are the Myer site (Myer is one of the biggest department stores like house of fraser) which looks quite pretty and then you realize all you can do is view the catalogue (page by page of the physical catalogue), you can't purchase and theres no proper search functionality. And the Bunnings Warehouse site (like B&Q) which lets you look through their catalogue again at (sometimes handrawn) pictures of the products and you can't buy, search or even see the prices.

These are on the better side, sometimes these sites just scan in their catalogue pages and put them up as PDFs and call it a website. There are no good places you can go to buy clothes or household goods online, if you search for ages you can sometimes find specialist like for PC parts or fridges, which will transact but then the design and navigation all looks a bit dodgy. Woolworths (one of the main supermarkets) does let you do online food shopping, but will only delivery to certain inner city postcodes.

I think maybe it is because the the country is so massive and the relatively small population is all centred on a few places that the delivery doesn't work out to be cost effective. I've also been reading that maybe the public have privacy / fraud concerns which is more an education and culture thing. Also I've heard that some shops like to set prices by store which wouldn't work very well with the web!

The situation does look to be improving. According to Ecommerce Journal article "eCorner, a leading ecommerce solutions provider, that hosts over 170 Web stores in its Australian SME cluster, reported 90% increase in traffic volume for November year on year." They also reports increase in use at Paypal and Eway (another payment system). There are also a few good comparison site like GetPrice now which make the process easier.

Weddings pt 1!

After organising my blogs I'm now thinking about our big event of the (British) summer. Had a bit of a shock a few days ago when I realised that there is only 8 months to go. Still have a few things to sort out.

I set up a wedding site to give all our info to guests using Momentville There are a few companies out there who will do this kind of thing, but momentville is free, simple to set up, and doesn't look too bad. You can add forum areas for guest to chat and add comments (e.g. favourite song recommendations for the reception!). You can upgrade and design your own template if you like too, but I found one of theirs which was ok. I particularly like that these guys are really enthusiastic about their system, are often updating it (and blog about the updates), and they respond really quickly to support questions.
On the other hand, trying to find a photograher was not so great. I would have thought having a decent website was an essential piece of their business these days. But a lot of the sites I've seen take so long to load, have links which don't work, and look awful . I don't expect them to be hard core developers, but surely a photographer wants to have a online experience which supports and enhances his work? True, the great sites I have seen tend to be the ones charging a fortune, but it doesn't cost much to just ensure there are no errors, the images display and you're not using clashing colours? Anyway, I have now booked Michael Marker, who has great references, seemed lovely when we spoke on the phone and has a simple, but effective website :-)

The wedding forums I've looked at have been helpful too, there are so many - will write more of a review of them later...

Organising blogs

I have forgotten about this blog for a while, having been so busy with moving over to Sydney, and using this blog to tell our friends and family about adventures. But that is not really the place for all the posts I want to write so am picking this one up again.

By now I definitely do have a lot to say about Australian ecommerce, internet and mobile and looking forward to getting it all down.