Bango.com website update

We just uploaded a fresh new bango.com website.

- redesigned (after a lot of AB testing) to help people become Bango users / customers more easily.

- a design that can easily be expanded to integrate with Blogs and feeds.

- new investor relations blog with email and RSS feeds

- new page architecture to allow faster responses and easier scalability in the future

Comments please to http://forums.bango.net or support@bango.com

Mobile is different but people want a unified world

This week’s Mobile Monday gathering in New York on April 28, 2008 on the topic of Social Search and Mobile Analytics gave some interesting insights on what’s shaping the mobile web and what’s important for businesses:

1. Design for the mobile web – sites designed specifically for mobile web are so much better even on handsets like the iPhone.  There was a debate whether Sprint’s new transcoding would have a positive effect on user experience and it was too early to say.

2. Mobile search needs to be different from desktop search.  Steve Ives at Taptu gave an illustration about Google using linking to other sites as value in search relevance.  This isn’t really applicable in mobile search because mobile sites don’t link to each other as frequently as on the desktop web.

3. Existing desktop analytics don’t work on mobile as JavaScript isn’t supported well.  Adding Google analytics code to a mobile website creates huge problems for people trying to download a mobile web page as it adds such a heavy piece of code.

4. Businesses want a unified world.  Dan Mason from ESPN said he needs a single analytics tool for both desktop and mobile and how important it was for them to be able to get information about handsets and carriers but also to be able to uniquely identify users.

5. To uniquely identify users you need a persistent user ID.  I said that Bango was the only company to provide a persistent user ID, other analytics vendors discard the cookie based ID after 30 days but it’s important to offer enhanced personalize the user experience this isn’t discarded.

6. Long tail in mobile search is here.  Bryson Meunier asked for examples of long tail search in mobile and I said that an excellent example of it happening is bango.com/live, where we see lots of customers’ sites being viewed by users in other countries so they must have been found in mobile search.

So what did the folks with strange hair think of mobile?

ad:tech is the place where all the trendy leaders in the online advertising business go to discuss and display their latest technologies and services - where clicks and page views are discussed alongside web search and ad network aggregation. For someone more familiar with the mobile world of CTIA, it’s a show full of strange hair, designer shoes and odd-shaped spectacles… 
 
But at this show there is something very new in the air - the Mobile Web. Sure there are a few text message marketing companies but the real story is the good old internet on all those mobile phones - everyone knows it’s the new marketing revolution and wanted to know more - even those without a shiny new iPhone or 8Gig N95 know it’s the future. Bango, along with other leading mobile web companies like iLoop and NetBiscuits are showing the benefits of mobile in the first ever Mobile Marketing Pavilion.
 
Many people I spoke with had done their homework and knew about mobile but most did not realise the full extent of the opportunity or the maturity of the market. The biggest absense in the show were the big marketing agencies and the new mobile ad companies - both I’m sure would have found great benefits in attending.
 
So was it worth it? You bet, there was never a quiet moment and we had interesting people to speak with right up to the last second. Mobile certainly made an impact at this show and is most definitely here to stay. We look forward to the New York and London ad:tech shows.

Of course the mobile web’s not dead!

I don’t know whether you have had as much fun as we have reading the various blogs responding to story that Russell Beattie Throws In The Towel On Mowser; And Doesn’t Believe In The Mobile Web Anymore (here in MocoNews).  Of course, the mobile web is not dead.   All you have to do is take a look at our live ticker of people accessing mobile websites and paying for services through the Bango platform to see it’s alive and kicking. 

And is very much a global phenomenon - as we reported earlier this year, 54% of mobile browsing is from outside of the US and Europe.  India, South Africa and Indonesia sit alongside the UK and the US in our mobile web browsing top 5.  Take a look at the mobile web from the point of view of people in these countries and you see that mobile phones are the only way they can access the internet.  Why?  Because the majority of people in these countries don’t have a PC - and why should they?

Also, let’s not get too hung up on the iPhone and how it’s changing the world.  Yes, it’s encouraging people to surf the web on their phone but the penetration of the iPhone in the mobile phone market is still tiny and in many ways it’s a closed system.  Also although most business executives own a SmartPhone so they have access to email and voice on the go, this doesn’t reflect the vast majority of mobile phone users and what they want to do.  In our view, most mobile web surfers are using their mobile to to get a range of stuff - updated sports scores, listen to music, view traffic alerts and be entertained (yes and that does mean adult content for some). 

It’s everyday people accessing everyday stuff that’s feeding the mobile web.  

Online advertisers look to mobile and learn

Three important events this week illustrate how mobile marketing is finally being taken seriously by the online advertising industry.  First is ad:tech in San Francisco where America’s top interactive marketing executives gather to network, learn and sell. The second is a mobile marketing conference in London from the publishers of New Media Age which aims to “Bring it all together”.  Thirdly, the Mobile Marketing Association has it’s EMEA event this week in London with many pioneers from online and mobile marketing in attendance.  At each event, case studies will figure widely as a way to inspire brands to give it a go and companies will be on hand to guide businesses through every aspect of mobile.

But what can we do to ensure a brand’s first foray into mobile is a successful one?

We believe that starting small and targetting your campaign at the right user demographic is key.  Too many marketers get their fingers burnt by running a 6 figure mobile campaign and then don’t take the important step to determine the ROI and analyze the results.   

Did you reach the countries you wanted with your campaign?   What was your click-through rate and how did this compare with the industry average?  What was the cost of customer aquisition or click-to-call responses?  What the industry needs are standards and metrics for ROI as we have in the online advertising world.  With these, marketers will have the confidence to experiment with marketing to mobile users and learn what works just as we did in online advertising.  That’s why mobile analytical tools will prove to be key for marketers as they move their marketing dollars into mobile advertising and discover how this most personal of all mediums is a powerful new frontier to engage with consumers.

Why web analytics tools aren’t any good for mobile?

During a webinar we recently held on mobile analytics, quite a few people asked why existing PC web analytics tools couldn’t be used for the mobile web. 

Here’s why:

Current tools designed for PC web analysis simply don’t work.  Google Analytics uses JavaScript embedded in a website to measure visits.  Unfortunately the majority of mobile handsets don’t support JavaScript, in fact less than 1% are supported.  Other systems use cookies to track visits - on mobile this is unreliable.  Mobile phone browsers either doesn’t permit cookies or don’t save them.  

PC browsers use referral information about where the user came from but on mobile network gateways this is not typically support - it’s only recently that handsets and operators have started to support this and currently it’s proving to be unreliable.  Some web analysis techniques use tiny images embedded in a web page to track visits.  To reduce amount of data sent over the mobile network, images are cached in the mobile browser so are often not downloaded on subsequent visits.  The final approach is mapping an IP address to a user but in the mobile world IP addresses map onto an operator’s gateway, not an individual phone.

How is web analysis done in the mobile world?

Most PC web analytics tools measure page visits.  On mobile, analytics looks at individial visitors navigating through a site and clicking links.  When you set up a search term or mobile ad, you insert a tracking link or tag which re-directs the consumer from an ad to the Bango servers where we record the user id plus information about where they came from and when pass them back to you.  This means when they come to you, you already valuable information about your visitor.  You can use this to personalize the user experience.

Does this impose bandwidth limitations?

No, there are no perceived performance hits on this approach.  If you are already doing a large number of re-directs on your mobie site then you do need to bear in mind that some operators restrict the number of re-directs allowed.  Bango has carried out extensive testing on sites with milions of hits a month and this has not caused a problem.

If you’d like to find out more about the different approaches taken in mobile web analytics, Bango is running its next mobile analytics webinar on April 23, 2008 which you can sign up for now.

US takes pole position in mobile advertising?

Will the US lead in mobile advertising as they did in online advertsing 10 years ago?  If recent figures from Nielsen Mobile are anything to go by, the answer could well be yes.  According to their research 23 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers say they have been exposed to advertising on their phones in the past 30 days.  That’s 58 million people.

Importantly, thirty two percent of data users said they are open to mobile advertising. The US has a strong advertising culture so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that US consumers are so receptive.  So how do we take advantage of this opportunity.  Here’s our advice:

 1. Map the customer profile for your marketing onto relevant countries for your message.  You may need to slice and dice the market so look at which mobile networks in these countries map onto your customer profile - Boost and T-Mobile in the US and Virgin Mobile in the UK have a youth demographic.

2.  Only pay for traffic that you can convert so check your ad network can target by your chosen operator, country and device.

3. Then use Bango’s free mobile analytics tool to measure your ROI as it’s the only way you’ll know if you are hitting the right demographic with your message.

Bango stats show that 54% of people surfing the mobile web come from outside the US and Europe.  With the rapid rise of China into the mobile web surfing charts, the need for well targeted mobile advertising that reaches the intended consumer profile is as important as ever.

Chocolate that makes me see red!

Some big companies really miss the point of mobile.

I often travel to London and one of the simple pleasures on the return train journey is a cup of coffee, a Kit Kat and a seat. (I’m easy to please :-) So I was doubly excited to see the “Win Twenty Quid” offer on the bright red wrapper. You just had to get your mobile out and send a text message with a secret code from the inside of the wrapper. I enjoyed my Kit Kat - it was a new dark chocolate version - and then with slightly chocolatey fingers typed the the gobbledygook 12 character code in an SMS message on my mobile and sent it to their shortcode. In a flash I got back the message “Sorry, you haven’t won this time. Keep trying…” Oh well better luck next time.

There was also a link on my mobile screen with “T&Cs at www.wintwentyquid.co.uk” so I thought at least I’ll be able to get a freebie wallpaper or find out some useless Kit Kat facts, like it was first produced in September 1935 in York.

But no - to my amazement and horror, the URL which had been sent to my mobile phone, was for the desktop PC website. My new Nokia N95 coped fairly well downloading and rendering the 100K of useless non mobile page, but I’m sure for many customers, all it will do is take a while, cost them in data charges and hang their browser.

How in this day and age can a company with the marketing might of Nestle get it so wrong? I could have had a great mobile user experience and interacted positively with their brand. But I was left bemused and wondering about the 10 million or so other people who click the link and get left with a bad taste.

Perhaps I should just stick with eating the chocolate.

I saw what you did and know who you are

It’s not Big Brother, but with the launch of Bango Analytics this week, mobile website owners will now get a unique view on who their visitors are and what they are doing. Also it’ll provide valuable information on how mobile ads are performing, right across different ad networks. All this is done without revealing any personal data.Many marketing firms have not taken the pluge into mobile advertising for the sheer inability to measure the effectiveness of a campaign prior to this point. This all changes with Bango Analytics - see what the media thought of the product:

MocoNews

ClickZ

RCR Wireless

Mobile Entertainment

Yahoo

Wireless Week

Adotas

Posted in mobile web.

New version of Bango Live

A new version of the Bango Live traffic sampler just went live at www.bango.com/live