Use of the web ‘on the go’ is increasing.  The launch of the iPhone certainly had a lot to do with this and amounts to almost 2/3rds of mobile browsing.  Viewing typical websites on screens a few inches tall became much easier but still not quite right.

But not everyone on a mobile device is seeing the same thing.  Clever people behind the web can make different users see different things depending on the device in use.  And I don’t just mean pretty colours or fewer graphic.

A mobile version of a website can be an entirely different site in its own right with tuned functionality and special design.

Take yellow pages as an example for a moment (and let’s pretend that we’re not all using Google instead). Yellow’s website had a fairly complicated set of input boxes that relied heavily on type to drive it.

Well that’s too hard in a mobile environment – even with the iPhone it was clunky.

A mobile version of Yellow’s website is available instead and it’s got just two input boxes – that’s all – and the design is as simple and clean as possible.

This stuff has been happening quietly without most of you realising.

We built a mobile version of Petrusma Property years ago.  If you’re on a compatible device it will automatically show you a different website.

But why have a different mobile site?

Well, how many intricate search panels are customary in real estate websites?  Heaps!  When you’ve got a full keyboard in front of you and a big screen you’re relatively happy to be very descriptive about what you want.  But on a mobile device, forget it, it’s too hard!

Creating the Petrusma Property mobile site wasn’t just about simpler functionality either.  The audience is different on a mobile device.  The user has different needs and exhibits different behaviour.

We cut huge amounts of content and tuned the site down to the critical items that were relevant.  We had to think like someone standing outside a property with a mobile device in their hand prepared to invest maybe 20-30 seconds of time.

So do you need a mobile version of your site?

That’s a tricky question as it depends on what sort of content you’re delivering and whether or not it’s hard to interact with ‘on the go’.

With the rise of iPhone-like devices it’s becoming increasingly easier to view normal websites with relative effectiveness so you may be just fine with one site.

But if your business depends on ease of use in terms of delivering content that is critical to your users you’re going to have to build tuned websites for each platform your customers use.

This is a bigger problem than you may realise.  With the Internet becoming more of a fabric between the community it’s not just PC’s anymore.  It is fridges, TV sets, phones, games consoles, cars and trains.

I’d place bets that even a toilet will be connected one day!  Hooray I could flush remotely… or use the web with one hand.

My point is that whilst the range of devices accessing the web increases we need to consider the different environments in which our customers and users will interact with each other.

Users will have different needs and perhaps even different ways of physically interacting with devices – take touch screen technology as an example.

It stands to reason that any organisation on the web needs to think more broadly than just showing one web design on one device.

Take the visionary steam power of what America is doing by opening up as many government services as possible via the web ( for the greater benefit of the community) and combine that with Australia’s National Broadband Network buzz and ‘Gov 2.0’ is our national problem.  Oops… I mean opportunity.

Please excuse my optimism slurs.  I’m from the private sector.

Vision. That’s what Barack Obama seems to have.  Issues.  That’s what we Aussies see, and particularly Tasmanians, if the recent Hobart chapter of the round tables was anything to go by.

In front of us right now is a massive opportunity to be a smarter, kinder, more connected community from government down.  Words and promises I’ve heard from many politicians in the last 2 years.

According to the gov2.net.au website its taskforce work falls into two streams.

The first relates to:

“increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information.”

The second stream:

“is concerned with encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life.”

Great! This is the stuff of dreams and is music to the ears of every web professional in the country.  But why are Tasmanians struggling with this?  Why did the round table focus so much on the issues and dangers of opening up data rather than looking for value creation?

I’ve been spruiking the benefits of opening up data systems in previous editorials and hopefully you remember views I’ve shared from visionary web leaders about the value that can be realised from mashing up data from various sources and extracting value for the community.

Let’s solve health problems, predict trends in viral movements, gain intelligence in financial decision making, improve access to services… don’t laugh, but the classic example is the issue of Google not knowing where our public toilets are in our country!

Why can’t we get this data out?

Commercial concerns about owning data sets and ‘they’re mine – you can’t have them unless you pay me’ stack up against internal issues resulting in organisations being too politically hamstrung to work out how to even open the door.  Add to these two hurdles what I’m calling a ‘cultural cringe to an open and connected world’.

Where is this cringe the worst?  At the risk of invoking a covert operation to assassinate yours truly I’ll put my hand up and say ‘at the heart of state government’.  It’s often all too hard and not within mandate or budget to have such a vision.

Thankfully the national taskforce has been led by visionary people and their function is not just to provide a report but to ‘fund initiatives and incentives which may achieve or demonstrate how to accomplish government 2.0 objectives.’

Unfortunately I guess our pessimistic Tasmanian stance in front of the taskforce means there won’t be many good pitches for concept projects and Tasmania may miss out on showing off our shiny new NBN roll out before the rest of the country stands up and capitalises on it.

Where are our Tasmanian internet thought leaders?

Who will drive the culture shift needed to embrace open data sets and create value in our new web future?

Anybody want to join me in a gov2.0 project pitch?

Nobody’s actually asked me that in the last 6 months but this issue has stopped almost every commercial social networking project in its tracks.  I’ve lost count of how many businesses have come to me with dubious enthusiasm to push their product or service and gone home sour after picking apart the fundamentals.  Now hopefully this isn’t a reflection of my character and more so a reflection of the relatively intangible value and uncertain path to leveraging social networking for commercial outcomes rather than individual benefits.

So what’s the problem?

I think the need for fundamental mindset shifts are coupled with marketing challenges to form two significant barriers.  That and of course the wad of cash needed to build something like a Facebook application.

When people group together to derive value from one another online I think there’s a point where a critical mass must be realised.  There’s a point where the return is clear and self sustaining – I call it social momentum.  Facebook has done it, but just because there are lots of users doesn’t mean they want anything to do with your business.

I’m concerned about how we get through this phase of web interaction from a commercial standpoint.

There’s a broad spectrum of ways of taking advantage of this movement.

• Some people want to build Facebook-style functionality into their sites to hold richer member or customer profiles and let them do status updates, blogs, comments, and ratings… but do people really want this?  It can look great for you i.e. ‘you care’ and want to give ‘freedom of speech’ to your members or customers – but – how many of us users really want to have accounts across tens or hundreds of sites in order to contribute?  I don’t!  And so I wonder what business value is there in simulating functionality that exists all over the place anyway?
• Another example would be a brave commercial entity devoting effort to setting up a simple forum – knowing very well that this could be a political and media nightmare that damages them.  Well is that where the customer is going to put a complaint (or maybe praise) or will they vent it through rating a Google search result or some other highly visible and highly trafficked area?  In this case the brave organisation may end up with a disused forum that has moderation staff allocated to it…  It is tough to know where you’ll get the value from.
• If you were a real estate company you could build a Facebook application that let prospective home buyers display and rate properties they were considering from you.  But I don’t think these things work for commercial entities because the data is so limited and consumers don’t work in such narrow channels – they’d want to list properties from multiple agencies.  So if you were a real estate company you’d be better off investing in building a universal application that showed your competitors too.

So we hit on a nerve here.

To do something successful you may have to shift your thinking and be open to abuse, criticism, supporting your competitors, sharing secrets and so on… and maybe give benefit to someone other than yourself.  But that’s kind of the essence isn’t it?  If you’re doing something in the social sphere then you need to play to the need of the masses and not that of your organisation.

Will the brave be the ones that are rewarded for their risks in this open new world?  I think so.

If I could give you advice on this problem it would be to play to your own strengths as an organisation and not fear competitors working alongside you.  Use your brand credibility to build something interesting and of social value and the seemingly intangible return will be channelled via increased exposure and association with something hopefully cherished by your customers.  But what that is exactly will need great consideration and advice.

Considering that blogs, forums, and feedback tools are cheap functions to buy then it has to be worth a punt at face value.  Just don’t expect it to work without a serious marketing push, a well seeded base from which to operate, and some ongoing investment.

Are your customer relationships a critical success factor in your business?  If so, read on… 

Customers are evolving and their comfort with the web is changing daily.  Right now they expect added value functionality online, to be empowered to publish content, and to communicate with other like-minded individuals through online communities.  They demand personalisation and networking which in turn unleashes the amazing power of ‘collective intelligence’ whereby groups of users share, learn, and improve their capabilities together.

The web should be an essential part of your ‘customer engagement’ strategy.  Properly embraced, it will allow you to create a fantastic brand experience for all customer segments.  It will become an integral role in operations and strategy, in particular: customer service, marketing, market research and product development. 

Where are things going in the next few years?

Let’s look at the history of the web so far:

• ‘Web 1.0’ is now understood much as The Document Web. 
• ‘Web 2.0’ was agreed to have brought us richer functionality and user driven control of their experiences. 
• ‘Web 3.0’ is the DATA web – and it’s time to mash it up!

Web 3.0 carries the vision that all data will be consumable and open for use across numerous applications in mash-up’s.  The term ‘mash-up’ describes the merger of various data sources and web functionality scavenged from various sites to create ultimately powerful tools and useful experiences for users. 

Consider that you have a range of data available to you right now: financial transactions, investments, personal calendar, travel details, etc.  Plus you have access to various news media such as current events and natural disasters, weather, ASX announcements and currency market shifts.  Your health records are with your doctor but what if you could source them electronically.  You may even be on Facebook and have access to information about your friend’s … the list goes on. 

Imagine all these data sources being open and able to be reused in multiple ways in your own and other applications; mashed-up.

Imagine pivoting around a point of data such as a day or a bank transaction and observing what you were doing on that day… or where you might have been when you wrote a cheque.  You might see photographs of that location – they might be tagged to say who’s in them… or you might want to use Google Street View to have a look around…  You might see info about the companies nearby, their logos, and summaries of their services or their contact details.  Maybe this is useful in disputing a fraudulent transaction.

Imagine contributing your health data to doctors so they could track the emergence and movement of viruses and compare these to weather patterns, air travel patterns and demographics of the population.

The future of the web holds many possibilities and is very exciting.  In a Web 3.0 world your company’s services and data streams need to be available for customer consumption.

The challenge now of putting data on the web is that it needs to be available for all kinds of things – to all kinds of applications…  Users will come to expect this of you and your competitors.

Have you worked out how to improve customer stickiness and customer acquisition through the web?

Continuing on from last week’s article we’re going to help you with selection criteria for future proofing your online presence. Wikipedia eloquently states

“The phrase future proofing describes the elusive process of trying to anticipate future developments, so that action can be taken to minimize possible negative consequences, and to seize opportunities.”

The web and web technologies are ever changing; always evolving. Amusingly for those of us in the industry it seems as if the only constant is change. Consumer behaviour changes in part as a response to emerging technologies. We adopt new ways of doing everyday things. What may once have been a geek’s playground indeed tends to become a common tool or product that even your granny knows about. Take YouTube and Facebook for example.

Evolutionary trends and fads aside, your investment must generate return. You should expect a clear and tangible gain in efficiency, improvement in service, or measured exposure of your brand or initiative on an ongoing basis. Old hat measures of site traffic are not much more than a pat on the back telling you something is happening…. but what? Did you plan clear and measurable goals to deliver return on investment? Do you report on these at regular intervals and plan actions to tweak or change the course of your digital strategy accordingly? Were you encouraged to seek out integration points in your traditional business when you built your web asset? Did you integrate knowledge of your current user behaviour and determine how to keep an eye on shifting needs?

Diagram of various web criteria

Why have I raised these issues now you ask? This is a selection criteria piece, not crystal ball gazing or a rant about performance. But is it? If we look at the obvious criteria such as your supplier having: a rapport with your industry needs, a commercially sensitive design team, and a flexible but robust development approach – what are we left with? Quite a lot actually!

Considering the above issues, you’re going to need access to a proven methodology for planning success, an intuitive approach to user needs analysis, ongoing support by someone who ‘gets it’, proactive encouragement to understand emerging technologies, targeted digital marketing assistance, performance monitoring, and auditing of site structure and content strategies. On top of this you’re going to need to work with someone that not only ‘looks forward’ but ‘leans forward’.

Consider innovation in the context of the ever changing landscape of the online world – it’s hard work. Innovation in our view should be a part of the supplier’s culture. Innovation should be something ingrained in their every move; planning for the future whilst also creating it.

Do you now think differently about the selection criteria of your new project or existing web asset? I hope so. Don’t forget your budget will need to be reflective of the ongoing nature of the investment too.