One common complaint I hear is that QR codes are just too obscure. I don’t think that’s true. Aside from continual use in newspapers and magazines, they’re all over the city.

Here are a few examples that I snapped while walking around London.

the world’s first ad-supported Kindle, going on sale within Target and Best Buy locations for $114. That represents a gentle $25 savings compared to the price of today’s cheapest Kindle, but those 2500 pennies don’t come free — you’ll be asked to endure “advertisements on the bottom of the device’s home page and on its screen savers.”
Engadget

Can It Work?

On the strength of the current evidence – no.

Browsing on the Kindle’s web browser is a slow and frustrating experience. It’s slow at downloading, takes ages to render, and scrolling is a nightmare. That’s ok – it’s primarily a book; not a browser.

But that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is that advertisers just don’t know how to advertise on this medium. Take a look at the crap that goes on in mobile advertising. Do you think that advertisers will have the wherewithal to make a Kindle-friendly advert?

Not even Amazon can make it work. Take a look at this.

While browsing on the Kindle, I spotted this banner advert. What struck me was that the advertiser had clearly target the Kindle – probably via User-Agent sniffing. Intrigued, I clicked on it, only to be greeted with this monstrosity.

Yes – not even Amazon’s store renders well on the Amazon Kindle. While the mobile version of the site may work, there would still be no way to buy the book. Even if it did, I’m in the UK and can’t buy from the American store.

So, I ask again: If Amazon can’t write a website which works well on a Kindle – what makes you think an advertiser can?

What Would Work?

Many years ago – I was in discussion with the people who almost got the Kindle on their mobile network. There were a number of different business models floated – many completely unsuitable – but some only waiting for the right time.

1. The hardware for the Kindle is (reasonably) expensive as an upfront cost.
2. Most customers are mathematically challenged

Would people buy the Kindle in the same way that they buy a phone? Give customers a £111 Kindle FREE! (on a £9.99 per month contract).

Of course, the missing piece of the puzzle is what you get for the £9.99. Amazon book tokens? Free OTA podcasts? Subscriptions to newspapers?

I don’t have the answer – but I suspect Amazon wants to lower the cost of the hardware and increase the attach rate (number of Kindle books a user buys).

Why not do an offer similar to this.

• Kindle costs £111
• Comes with £200 worth of Amazon book tokens!
• The Amazon vouchers are in the denomination of 2*£10, 6*£7.50, 20*£5, 35*£1
• Or, perhaps the vouchers are in the form “50% off”, “25% off”, etc
• Vouchers are provided to the user over 12 months
• Vouchers expire after 3 months

The purchase price is all of a sudden much more palatable given the FREE vouchers. The discounts could probably be eaten by some publishers – or at least partially. The “risk” of buying an eBook is significantly reduced in the eyes of the customer – leading to an increased attach rate. Most customers aren’t going to use the full value of the vouchers.

Just sticking on banner adverts for perfume seems so… lazy!

Amazon’s Strengths

Amazon has a great record on “people who bought X also liked Y”. Why not bring that to Kindle? Instead of this incredibility lame screen…

…why not recreate this page for the 21st century?

Amazon has my credit card details and my address – they don’t need advertising from third parties!

• Finished reading Pride and Prejudice? Buy the DVD!
• Enjoyed Brick Lane? Get this great balti dish set delivered to your door!
• Wow! Oryx and Crake was pretty good huh? Download the sequel – The Year of the Flood

Subsidising the hardware cost with enforced banner adverts is a flabby and uninventive 1990′s business model. It also places the Amazon brand at risk of a crappy user experience.

I don’t think readers will welcome a turgid little banner for perfume. But I think they will embrace relevant and contextual advertising which adds value to their reading experience.

This is a really well executed campaign which should serve as a template to other advertisers. There are, of course, one or two issues that I have with it. Let’s start by zooming in to the QR Code.

Explanatory Text

It’s great to have a little note to explain to people what to do with a QR code.

A couple of interesting points.

• It recommends get.beettagg.com – this is misspelled. It should be get.beetagg.com – only one “T”.
• It’s interesting that they’ve used Kaywa to generate and manage the code – yet they don’t recommend Kaywa’s reader.
• Finally, the wording is a little clumsy. I prefer “app store” (singular) rather than “apps store” (plural) – but that’s just my personal preference.

Redirection

Using HTTP redirection to send visitors to another site automatically is usually quick – but there are pitfalls on mobile. Because of the latency inherent in mobile transmissions, multiple redirects are to be avoided where possible.

In this case, the redirection goes

1. Phone connects to Kaywa.com
2. Kaywa.com redirects to trailerqr.com
3. trailerqr.com redirects to wallstreet.mymovies.net
4. wallstreet.mymovies.net detects the phone and starts serving the correctly formatted video

So, the phone has to create three different HTTP connections to three different servers to get the content. In areas of good coverage, that shouldn’t be a problem. Where possible, you should seek to minimise the number of redirects.

The Video

As I’ve said, a differently formatted video was served depending on the handset requesting it.
Although they were appropriately sized (320 x 240 @15fps or 400 x 224 @25fps) I found them to be a little heavy. At 2 minutes 30 seconds, the trailers certainly represent value for money – but they weigh in at around 5 MB.

Again, this isn’t a huge issue if you’re in good 3G coverage and you’re not being billed per MB.

Finally, there’s a very odd copyright notice at the end of the video.

Overall

A great campaign – scan and go straight to the trailer. There’s not much to improve, but keep these points in mind for your next campaign.

• Check that the URLs you print are valid. There’s no excuse for the beettagg spelling error.
• Make the URL human friendly if possible. It gives the user confidence that the destination is something in which they’re interested.
• Don’t have too many redirects. Remember there are specific considerations when working on mobile.
• Consider your audience’s limitations. Is a multi-MB file going to cause problems for them?

Why Almost?

I’m a nit-picker – but here are a few suggestions to make the campaign better.

• Make the code bigger. When dealing with newsprint and its fuzzy images, it’s always better to make the QR as large as possible – or as large as your advertising team will allows. Larger images are easier to scan.
• 
• A little more whitespace around the code would improve its readability.
• The text instructions are great – either SMS or type the URL in directly – but the text is fuzzy and indistinct.
• The video is presented in 4:3 aspect ratio.
• 
• I appreciate that you don’t want people watching a stuttering 720p video over EDGE – but I feel that making the video widescreen to suit the majority of phones would have made the video more impressive. As it is, 240 x 192 the image looks a little blurred which perhaps isn’t the best advert for HD.
• Finally, I noticed the campaign appearing in other papers.
• 
• As far as I can see, it’s the same code. It would be a good idea to use a different code in each paper so you can see if, for example, Times readers are more likely to scan than Metro readers.

As I said – very minor complaints. Overall, an impressive use of QR codes from Sky. Well done to those involved.

Wonga, the payday loan company, has found itself in a bit of hot water recently. They’ve had an Advertising Standards Authority adjudication against one of their adverts and they have raised the ire of Stella Creasy MP over their sponsorship of the Tube on New Years.

Even London’s mayor has said

people should be aware of the extortionate rates of interest that they can charge and people should not enter into irrational or unwise debt obligations

Now, I’m not convinced that payday loan companies are bad per se. If you need a few hundred pounds to avoid being thrown out of your home, these companies can provide a service which traditional banks can’t – or won’t – provide. That said, taking out a loan is something which should not be done lightly – and should only be done with the full facts at your disposal.

That’s why I’m confused by Wonga’s latest advertising campaign on mobile. Here are three adverts that I’ve spotted recently.

None of them display the APR – even though there is sufficient room to do so.
I suppose they could argue that they are advertising the Wonga Android App – not a loan. Therefore they don’t need to display the APR. I’m not convinced that’s a sound argument – more on that in a moment.

Within the marketplace description, there’s no mention of the APR.

Only one of the screenshots mentions the APR.

I’ve been taking a look at the CAP guidelines and recent adjudications, and the OFT FAQs on this subject and I’m left a little confused as to whether hiding the APR in this way is allowed.

Is it simply enough to say

“I’m not advertising [banned product] – I’m advertising an app that lets you get it.”?

If so, I think the guidelines need to change.

Two Questions

1. Are Wonga in breach of the ASA and OFT codes governing advertising for financial products?
2. Does this trivialise money lending?

I’m not saying that Wonga are in breach of the rules. I don’t even wish to raise a complaint against them. I will be asking the ASA and OFT for clarification on this matter.

As for the app itself, it’s reasonably well crafted. While it’s great that you can do so much with a phone, I remain a little uneasy about applying for complex financial products while on the bus. But perhaps I’m getting old. I’m sure that next year I’ll be applying for a mortgage via a mobile website and not think it anything strange.

Now With Extra Irony

In one of those delightfully serendipitous moments, a Wonga advert popped up as I was reading Stella Creasy’s tweets.

This time, on a poster for high-brow art-house flick The Mechanic.

Quite close to the bottom of the poster – so low, I had to kneel to scan it – is a QR code.

Scan it and it takes you a mobile friendly trailer on YouTube.

Issues

It wouldn’t be a Terence Eden blog post if I didn’t criticise the approach taken by the advertisers.

• QR code is far too low down – who wants to stoop to scan (other than nerds like me)?
• No call to action. No one knows what this QR codes goes to until they scan it. You need to give someone an incentive to scan. Here’s a very quick mock-up I’ve made to show how I think it should be.
• 
• Short URL – even if you do scan the code, you still have no way of knowing where it’s going. The qrs.ly service is provided by QR Stuff who don’t offer editable URLs. Their premium service does offer all sorts of statistics and other options. But for a customer facing code, a friendly URL would probably be better. http://qrs.ly/Trailer for example.

So, overall, great use of a QR code to direct people to the trailer – but a little more effort on the call-to-action would have made people much more likely to scan the code and view the trailer.

A nice simple set of banners.

Let’s gloss over the missing apostrophe in this one though…

Which leads to the Groupon mobile friendly site.

Well formatted mobile site. Free text field for an email address and a drop down list of cities they support.

There’s no notion of what they’ll do with the email address – which is very naughty – but the worst is yet to come.

After filling in the form and clicking “Discover Deals” this is what the customer gets.

*sigh* So depressing. Why do this?

If you don’t have a mobile friendly site, don’t run a mobile advertising campaign.

At the bottom of tonight’s Evening Standard is this advert from Debenhams.

Debenhams QR Advert

The QR code immediately caught my eye and – being the saddo that I am – I immediatley whipped out ZXing and scanned it in.

Debenhams QR Code

What goodies would it net me? A URL to visit their mobile site? Contact details for a Christmas order line?

db::LIST::static-0011445

Let me repeat that…
“db::LIST::static-0011445″

Mean anything to you? Nope? Me neither. I even read it with another scanner to see if my phone was going bonkers. It was not.

“db::LIST::static-0011445″ What on earth can that mean? It was then that I noticed the instructions next to the code.

Debenhams QR Instructions

What? Let me count the ways this is wrong…

• What on earth does “shop the ad” mean? Is it a typo for “scan the ad”?
• Roughly 5% of Debenhams customers have an iPhone – why is this restricted just to them?
• I don’t know how many people have already downloaded the Debenhams app – but fewer than 500 people have rated it. With an average rating of 3* – it’s unlikely many more will grab it.

The customer interaction is currently “Do I have an iPhone (probably no). Have I installed the app (probably no). Can I install this 6.4MB app while I’m on the train (probably no). Now let me scan the advert.”

What kind of response rate is that likely to get?

How They Should Have Done It

Here’s how the code should work – in my opinion.

• Point the code at http://m.debenhams.com/0011445 – that way, the 95% of phone which aren’t iPhone will have somewhere to go. If there isn’t a mobile Debenhams site – make it redirect to an advert hosted on YouTube.
• If an iPhone visits that URL, check to see if they have the application installed. If they don’t, redirect them to the iTunes store.

Pretty damn simple.

Remember – most of your customers don’t have the same phone as all the cool kids in your marketing department. Not all your customers live and breath your brand – don’t expect them to have your application on their phone.

In the left corner – John Lewis sporting a QR Code.
In the right corner – the Donkey from Shrek going into battle with an MS Tag.

FIGHT!

QR Code

This use of QR code leaves me a little conflicted.

On the one hand, the code is too small and, either in resizing or printing, has become distorted.

On the other hand, the code resolves to a great mobile site.

You can also read Nick Burcher’s analysis of this campaign.

MS Tag

I’ve previously railed against the MS Tag. In this advert, the tag isn’t the problem – the destination is.
The tag is well presented – although the disclaimer text doesn’t need to mention messaging charges.

Scanning the tag with Microsoft’s proprietary reader (assuming it’s available for your phone) takes you to this rather hopeless Facebook page.

That’s right. The tag points to the WWW page of Facebook – rather than the mobile site! The video is flash based, meaning many phones won’t play it – including Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7.

Trying to playback the video is a jerky affair – and not helped by the fact that the video doesn’t take up the full screen of the player.

The advertiser really should have pointed to a mobile friendly video site like YouTube or Vimeo.

Conclusion

Despite the weakness of the MS Tag campaign, this is not the fault of the tag itself. Pointing to a useless destination is possible with either technology.

Both tags scanned quickly on my devices – although the QR code should have been bigger and clearer.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that neither tag is particularly well integrated with the advert.
John Lewis could have placed the QR code as one of the boxes of the Christmas tree. The MS Tag is shunted to the side with no real consideration of how it fits in with the rest of the creative.

Overall, while it’s heartening to see 2D tags going mainstream, advertisers need to work harder to ensure that their tags mesh well with the advert and that the destination is always mobile friendly.

The QR code is near the bottom, and has some explanatory text letting you know how to use it. There’s even a shortcode to get a reader.

The URL that’s sent back from the SMS is http://www.isitetv.com/mobile/reader.html which redirects to the popular i-nigma reader.

A clearer shot of the QR card

The QR resolves to http://www.isitetv.com/pen-m1.htm?INGUID=17662.

The Mobile Site

Light and quick to load. Uses a single image with links to mobile formatted videos.

The only downside is that the Terms and Conditions links to a non-mobile site.

How To Make It Better

Overall, this is a really well executed QR campaign. There are a few niggles – thankfully minor.

• If possible, consider the height of your QR code in relation to the typical viewer. This one is quite near the ground. Making people stoop is a barrier to entry.
• Keep your URLs short. The current URL “http://www.isitetv.com/pen-m1.htm?INGUID=17662″ could be rewritten as “http://isitetv.com/pen?i=17662″ for example. A shorter URL is easier to scan.
• Keep URLs on brand. To prevent QR hijacking, a URL like “http://m.olympus.co.uk/PEN/17662″ reassures customers that they’re going to a legitimate site.
• Finally, if possible, make sure all URLs point to mobile friendly pages.

Well done to Olympus and iSiteTV for a great QR campaign.

You can buy Olympus pen cameras on Amazon

Clicking the advert takes you to your phone’s dial screen with British Gas’s phone number ready to dial. (This goes via an ad network so they can count hits.)

This is pretty good, they’re redirecting phones to the following URL

tel:08081205054

The tel: schema is close to universal. Any phone which can see that advert can also call that number. Great! Right?

Wrong!

When Is Free Not Free?

It may surprise you to know that “freefone” numbers often aren’t free to call from a mobile. The reasons are a little arcane – but it means that any 080 number will cost your callers. Calls to 080 numbers generally do not come out of a customer’s inclusive minutes.

So, using an 080 number will not be free. Kinda defeats the purpose of buying a “freefone” number, doesn’t it? Especially on a campaign targeted to mobile users.

Where Are You?

Secondly, British Gas have assumed that anyone viewing this advert is based in the UK. Unless their geo-targeting is very good, they may well be showing this to people anywhere in the world.

If your customer is roaming, an 080 number isn’t likely to connect to the UK call centre.

What To Do?

There’s a really easy way to solve the set of problems which British Gas have with this advert.

1. Use an 03 number.
2. Use +44 at the start of UK phone numbers.

03 Numbers

OfCom have created a phone code which allows a mobile caller to use their inclusive minutes even when calling a non-geographic number.

From What are 03 numbers?

Ofcom introduced UK-wide 03 numbers as an alternative to chargeable 08 numbers, such as 0870.

These new numbers allow organisations to have a single national point of contact without consumers having to pay extra to call them.

Calls to 03 numbers cost no more than a national rate call to an 01 or 02 number and must count towards any inclusive minutes in the same way as 01 and 02 calls.

These rules apply to calls from any type of line including mobile, BT, other fixed line or payphone

Fully Qualified Addressing

The ITU have a recommendation for how to write telephone numbers unambiguously (E.123). It recommends using the country code. Essentially, when making a click-to-call phone number for the UK, make sure it starts with +44.

What Should It Look Like

Ideally, British Gas should be using a number like: 03069 990123.
Written in the correct international notation: +44 3069 990123
So, the final link would be

tel:+443069990123

That way, their callers – wherever they are – won’t be paying extra to contact them.

(Oh, don’t worry, that number is reserved by Ofcom for testing and drama usage.)

Feedback – 16/11/2010

Just had this in from Mary McEneaney the Online marketing manager for British Gas…

Thanks for taking the time to review our mobile advertising and you raise a good point on the use of “free” telephone numbers. Based on this feedback we’re going to change the number to a 03 number

(Quoted with permission)

That’s great news! Thanks to Mary and the team at British Gas for being so responsive to feedback.

Here’s the poster in situ

Here’s a close up of the code

It’s a reasonable physical size and the information density isn’t particularly high – so well done on that front.
I’d place a bit more whitespace around the code – but it scanned easily enough on my phone.

The website itself is ok. Nothing stunning.

It’s a great concept site – like Post Secret or GroupHug – but it really ought to be more mobile friendly.
The URL isn’t specific to the code – it’s just http://www.thefamilysecrets.co.uk/ – so they have no real way of knowing how many people scanned it.

Still – good to see QR codes becoming more prominent.

Easy A is new film aimed squarely a the youth market.  Perfect fodder for mobile advertising.

Cute little advert, doesn’t say what it will link to, but other than that, not bad.  So let’s click through and see what happens.

Sweet! YouTube has an excellent mobile optimised site.  The ability to share the video on Facebook and Twitter is sure to make this baby go viral. Right? Right?

As the kids say, WTF?

Sony Pictures have deliberately disabled mobile playing for their video.  As far as I can tell, for all their videos.

All is not lost, though.  Helpfully, someone has been very naughty and illegally uploaded the video for us all to enjoy.

Lessons Learned

• Always test your advert – especially on the platforms for which they’re intended.
• If you’re a major movie studio and you don’t want your content pirated – make it easily available.

Failure 1 – Targeting

This version of the Tesco shopping app is only available on Nokia phones. Nothing wrong with that – Nokia are still the biggest phone seller on the planet. So why allow the advert to be shown to Android users?

It will annoy users, reduce your CPM, and make users less likely to click on adverts in future.

Failure 2 – Sizing

This is the full resolution on the advert.

(full resolution)

168*28 is barely enough to contain all the information you want to impart – let alone make it look attractive.
The Tesco logo is tiny and indistinct – the wording blurred and hard to read.

Failure 3 – Mobile Friendly

Here we come to the failure that we see so often. A lack of mobile friendly landing page.

Responsibilities

Guardian needs to make sure its ad-server are only showing adverts relevant to the user viewing the site.
The ad-server needs to make sure its adverts are scaled correctly for different phones.
Tesco needs to ensure that its advertising agency is buying advertising space correctly.
Nokia needs a mobile friendly page for non-Nokia devices.

Lost Opportunity

Just think what Nokia could be doing with this landing page for non-Nokia phones.

• Show off the amazing capabilities of the app.
• Display screenshots of the app.
• Tell the user which phones the app works on.
• “Don’t have a Nokia? Take a look at these awesome devices!”
• “Here’s a map to your nearest Nokia store…”
• “Get £100 off any Nokia device when you trade in your Android phone!”

You know the crazy thing? They do most of these things already!

If you try to download Ovi Maps on a non-Nokia – you get this page?

Nokia really need to have a joined up strategy for how they deal with users who have competitors’ devices. Both the Guardian and Tesco need to do some quality control on their adverts and ad servers.

Peugeot’s new mobile advert has a couple of critical flaws – but has just enough innovation to redeem it in my eyes. Read on to find the two basic mistakes they made, how to solve them, and the cool feature you should be incorporating into your adverts.

Clicking on the advert takes you onto a fairly swish looking landing page. There are some clear calls-to-action, and some attractive graphics.

I find the text a little hard to read. Let’s zoom in.

Yikes! The whole site is an image! This is incredibly bad practice for several reasons.

• The page weight will be excessive. This means your site will be slow to load and possibly cost your customers more to access it.
• Inability to zoom in. With some smartphones like the X10mini having tiny screen, you need to consider how your site will look over a wide range of devices.
• SEO. Search engines can’t read images. Plain text will ensure your site is spidered.
• Reflowing – what happens when the user rotates the screen? Your image won’t scale and reflow as well as text.
• Updating. If you need to update the site, you’ll have to edit a series of images – one for each screen size. With text, one change and you’re done.

In Praise of…

The usual “Find A Dealer” service asks the user to type in their postcode or some other location based detail. I’m very pleased to say that Peugeot goes one step beyond this. They take advantage of the geo-location api of the phone so that the user doesn’t have to do any extra work. Brilliant.

This is a great use of the technology. Let computers do what they do best and reduce the need of your user to type data in.
You can use a cross-platform geo-location solution like Google Gears to detect your users’ location.

Ideally, the domain name should be that of the product.  The user probably doesn’t know who “sevenal-fit.com” are – but they would recognise “peugeot.com”.

Text Effects

This is the final fly in the ointment.
Is this piece of text a link? How about this one? What about this?

By convention – and good usability practice – links are styled differently than regular text.  Usually by underlining or displaying in a different colour.  It helps the user see what actions they can take on a page.  Have a look at this results page and see if you can tell what you can click on.

Not very intuitive – is it?  It looks like a list of results with no further information.

As it happens, you can click on the dealer names.

Again, there’s no text decoration.  While it’s good that they’ve used click-to-call for the phone numbers, there’s no indication until you’ve placed your finger or cursor over the text that it’s a link.

Don’t make your users think.  Clearly signpost the actions which are available to them.

It’s also worth including a map of the area – or even directions from the user’s current location.  Remember, the end goal of this advert is to make someone buy a car.  Make it as easy as possible for your users to go from advert to purchase.

Conclusion

Text is better than images.

Remember to decorate your text correctly.

Geo-location is awesome – but don’t forget to display a map.

Finally, consider which domain name the users will see and if they will trust it to store their data securely.

It starts well enough with an animated GIF.

The site it links to is http://music.nokia.co.uk/ – cleverly, Nokia redirect mobile users to a specific mobile version of the site.  That’s where it all starts to go wrong…

Viewport Is Your Friend

This is what the user sees on visiting the advert.  Better hope they’ve got great eyesight!

This is caused by having an obnoxiously wide graphic at the top – but also by not setting the viewport correctly.

In the <head> section of your HTML, you can define how wide the page should display.  You can set the width of the page to automatically be that of the phone with this single line of code.

 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0;"/>

This will ensure your readers don’t have to manually zoom in to read the marketing message you’re trying to impart.

You can find more information about Viewport on Learn The Mobile Web.

Don’t Link To Non-Mobile Sites

On this mobile website – where do you think the links lead?

Not only do they point to large pages totally unsuitable for mobile – one of the sites requires Flash to work. Thereby further excluding millions of potential customers.

It’s one of the first rules of mobile advertising – don’t force your customers to download megabytes of unusable data.

What Are You Trying To Do?

Finally, what’s the point of this advertising campaign?

The main purpose seems to be to get me to download content on to my PC. An odd proposition for a mobile site, surely?

Given that it can’t be used by anyone without a Nokia phone – why is it being served to me?

If it is trying to entice me to buy a Nokia device so I can experience “Comes With Music” – why is it doing its best to treat me like a second class citizen?

Ask yourself this question – what are Nokia trying to acheive with this advert. Nokia’s effort doesn’t seem to offer any value or information for anyone. What a waste of time and money.

How to unsubscribe

If you want to unsubscribe from this SMS spam, you have three options.

1. Ring “Dill” on 0121 359 0234 – she works for Floors2Go and will be happy to remove you from the list.
2. Floors2Go purchased your phone number from tmnmedia – who assured Floors2Go that you were desperately interested in getting SMS spam. Call them on 020 7936 6600. Or call Matt Love 020 7936 6520 – you can also email him on matt.love@tmnmedia.com – Matt was responsible for the SMS “campaign” and is happy for you to email him if you want your number removed.
3. But that’s not all! tmnmedia purchased your number from Scientia Data Call them on 0207 940 9797. At the moment, I’ve got “Tess” from Scientia looking in to where they got my number from.
4. 10/09/2010 – According to Tess, Scientia data purchased the number from Call Credit. You can call them on 0113 388 4300 – but they’ll tell you to email for a “Subject Access Request Form”. So, email info@callcreditgroup.com – so, that’s what I’m trying next.
5. 08/10/2010 – According to Charlotte Spencer, Call Credit Group don’t keep phone numbers on their database. Either Call Credit are lying or Scientia are. The investigation continues.

Remember – if you ring each of them, they’ll soon see the value of SMS spam…

Hope that helps.

Original Article

If there’s one thing I hate more than SMS spam – it’s crap SMS spam.

Let’s count the errors in this atrocious attempt at mobile marketing.

• Where is my nearest Floors-2-Go store?
• What number should I call to find the nearest store?
• WHY THE random capitalisation of SOME words?
• Grammatical and spelling errors (“UKS” should be “UK’s”. “upto” should be “up to”)
• No return number – I can’t opt-out nor text them for more information.
• No mobile website.
• IT’S SPAM! HORRIBLE NASTY EVIL SPAM.  The mobile is the only battery powered toy I caress against my face and take to bed with me.  It’s personal and intimate.  If I haven’t given you permission to invade my personal space – I’m not going to be best pleased with you.

Look – don’t spam people.  But if you are going to – at least put some effort. This is a pathetic attempt at engaging the customer.

Samsung Galaxy S

The Galaxy S is Samsung’s latest Android handset.  There are so many Android phones out there that you need a really great advertising campaign (or a really great product) to stand out from the competition.

Let’s take a look at the Samsung campaign.

Small Isn’t Beautiful

Advert for GalaxyS on Guardian Mobile site

The advert is disproportionately small compared to the rest of the site.  The Android phone I’m viewing on has a screen width of 480 pixels – the advert looks tiny and pathetic.

At first I thought it was the Guardian mangling the advert – but a look at the URL shows that 4th Screen have decided to serve up a 168*28 image.

Tiny Banner Ad

Worse than that, they’ve blindly resized the image rather than rework it.  Take a look zoomed in – the text is illegible.

Tiny Banner Ad

The Micro-Site

The site behind the advert isn’t too bad.  But there’s nothing exciting about it.  Just a series of static pages.  You can visit it at http://galaxys.co.uk/

What Do You Want Your Customers To Do?

With every mobile advertising campaign, you need to think about what it is you want to accomplish.  This campaign is, presumably, designed to encourage people to buy the Samsung Galaxy S phone.  So, it would make sense if people could buy the phone from the site. No?

Try to buy the phone from this page

There are three glaring mistakes on this page.  Can you spot them?

1. No mention of price. Is this pre-pay or contract? Is this a premium product or a cheap and cheerful device?
2. No click-to-call.  Those phone numbers should be clickable and should take the customer straight through to the dedicated Galaxy S representatives.
3. Those images of the phone company logos are clickable – yet there’s nothing to suggest they are.

Still, clicking on those logos will let me buy the phone through a mobile-friendly shop. Right?

Mobile Companies Who Don’t Do Mobile

eTailing is hard.  Getting a web based shop up, running and profitable is tricky.  Getting a mobile version of that site can be even harder.  But if there were ever a company to do it well, you would expect them to be a mobile company.  Sadly, that’s not the case.

Vodafone's non-mobile website

Virgin's non-mobile site

So, our hapless user can’t use her phone to make a call to buy the handset, she can’t use the web browser to buy the handset.  Is she supposed to wander down to her local store to buy one? Way to make use of the mobile medium…

How To Fix It

All is not lost.  There are several easy steps which can be taken to fix this disaster.

• Serve up adverts which are correctly sized for the screen requesting them.
• Don’t resize adverts – create a unique advert for each screen size you’re targeting.
• Make you micro-site interesting. Add mobile YouTube videos.  Add wallpapers, ringtones, or competitions.  Give people a reason to visit the site and share it with their friends.
• Click To Call.  I don’t know how often I have to say this, but if your potential customers can’t place an order from your site – you will never convert them into a paying customer.
• Let the user know which parts of your site are clickable.
• Never redirect a user to a non-mobile website.  The user may have to pay the data charges and will get a site which they can’t use.
• Mobile e-tailing.  Three huge names in mobile – yet I can’t order this phone from my mobile. That’s just embarrassing. Either make a mobile friendly site, or give customers directions to their nearest store.

Mistake #1

Take a look at this rather charming advert on the Guardian’s mobile site. The more astute among you will recognise the problem.

I’m being advertised an iPhone game when I’m browsing the site using an Android phone. This is the fault of the Guardian – or, more likely, whoever runs their advertising department.

Well, let’s click on it.

Mistake #2

The image expansion doesn’t work. This is probably because it uses iPhone specific code.

Mistake #3

Let’s take a look at the raw image.

The image is a 135KB PNG. That’s massive. At a time when unlimited downloads are under threat, it is incumbent on the mobile web designer to minimise needless data usage.

If we convert the image to a JPG, the size goes down to 26KB. Can you spot the difference in quality?

Mistake #4

What happens if we visit the destination?

Ah. Apple send us to the desktop version of iTunes. This is better than what used to happen, where they tried to install iTunes!

Preventing The Problem

Every browser sends a User-Agent String. The advertising server should be configured to only send iPhone-specific adverts to iPhones.

It really is that simple. You can use services like WURFL and DeviceAtlas to automate this process if you like.

What Should Have Happened

• The advert shouldn’t have been shown in the first place. The Guardian needs to ensure that the advertising space it is selling is being correctly targeted.
• The click should have gone directly to Barclays – if they saw the phone viewing the content wasn’t an iPhone they should display alternate content.
• Apple needs to have a mobile friendly page. It really is that simple. A great mobile friendly page with a link that says “Want to play this games? Find your nearest Apple Store here“.

Orange

Take a look at the latest offering from Orange – a large UK mobile network operator.

Orange Advert on Guardian

Spot it? It’s the microscopic banner hidden away on the mobile site of the Guardian newspaper.

The advertiser has little choice in the poor placement. And it’s not their fault if the Guardian has resized it. Let’s take a look at the full size animated GIF.

Orange Advert

Ah.

Still, I’m sure the rewards for the eager-eyed viewer are magnificent….

Orange Badvert - click to embiggen

Not so much.

The potential customer is presented with a poorly resized image. The only link at the bottom takes them to a seemingly identical page.

Orange Badvert 2 - Click to embiggen

What Else Does It Do?

So, let’s look at the purchase experience.

Oh, there isn’t one. No nearest store finder. No mobile YouTube video showing off the phones. No click to call so you can buy one right now.

Nothing.

To recap, a tiny banner takes you to a poster. That’s it. No though has been given to the unique opportunities that mobile affords. There’s no way to convert an interested browser into a paying customer. If we’re being honest, there’s not really enough information in this microsite to justify an advert.

It is small, feeble and pointless.

Lessons To Learn

Ensure that your advertising assets are available n a variety of screen sizes. Small adverts are hard to click on. Worse still, they may be completely ignored.

If you can’t resize your images, unplug your computer and go home.

Think about what you want to achieve from the advert.
Are you trying to increase sales? Give the potential customer a direct route to purchase from you.
Are you trying to excite or interest potential customers? Provide enough interesting information. This isn’t print. You’re not limited by page size – only by your imagination.

Take advantage of the medium.  Mobile is so much more useful than print.  Orange seem stuck in the mindset that a single image is all an advert needs to be.

Message To Orange

You’re a mobile company.  Make your adverts reflect that.  You should be promoting excellence – not mediocrity.

Here’s a typical example.

BBC Advert

Intercontinental are a premium brand. No doubt their mobile advertising is really good. Right?

First Impression

Intercontinental Advert Page 1

We start off with a mobile friendly page.  Almost.  There are five flaws here.

1. Large image.  While visually appealing, consider that not everyone has a fast mobile Internet connection.  They may also have to pay per KB.  Is there a way to use multiple, smaller images to make things just as appealing as well as being quick and cheap?
2. Exposing a hyperlink.  It’s rarely a good idea to show the http:// and other inner workings of your systems.  It breaks the understood convention of the web and exposes your URL structure.  In this case it also shows that the website you’re sending people to neither belongs to Intercontinental nor the BBC.
3. Hyperlink colouring.  Convention is that links are in blue – or at the very least a different colour from the rest of the text – and underlined.  This allows customers to quickly and easily see where the clickable parts of the site are.
4. This is a mobile advert – where is the mobile mindset? Why am I signing up for an email newsletter?  Why not a monthly SMS or MMS?  Why not a mobile video showing how wonderful the Intercontinental is? Why not a mobile voucher to present at my next visit?  What a missed opportunity.
5. Bearing numbers 2 and 3 in mind, is “The Real” clickable? If so, where does it lead?  A consistent style helps with navigation.  Clearly explaining what lies behind a link encourages clickthrough.

Speaking of clickthrough – let’s go and sign up for this e-newsletter.

Disaster!

Regular readers of this blog know what’s coming next.

Not exactly mobile friendly

Yup. It’s a desktop web page which is totally unsuitable for mobiles.  Poorly formatted, hard to use and generally a disaster.  How much did they spend on mobile advertising?  Could they not have spared a few € for a mobile friendly sign up page?

Back a Step

Let’s go back to that first page and click on “The Real”.  Maybe it’s the real link to the mobile sign up form?

The Real

Ah! Now we see why InterContinental were advertising on the BBC – they have a tie in show.  The link right at the bottom goes back to the first page, what about www.bbc.com/thereal ?

Notice that, yet again, we have a different style of URL.  It isn’t underlined, it isn’t a different colour, but it is clickable.  This is the third style of URL on this site – totally confusing.

Let’s click (you all know where this is going, right?)

Calamity!

Non-Mobile BBC Site

To be sure, this is a lovely site – but it’s not exactly what you’d call mobile friendly.  What is the point of putting a link to a slow to download, expensive and poorly rendered desktop page within a mobile advert?

It doesn’t have to be this way!

The BBC excels at producing mobile tie in content.  Take a look at the mobile friendly Doctor Who page.

Doctor Who Mobile

Mobile formatted, downloads, videos, loads of interesting and engaging content.  Just the way it should be.

Conclusions

There is one important lesson to be learned here.

Make sure all of your site is mobile friendly.  That doesn’t just mean all pages are suitable for mobiles – it also means that the offer is suitable for mobile.

It’s a format that, for better or worse, has migrated to mobile.

Here’s the mobile Guardian showing off its latest advert for STA travel.

A Normal Banner Ad? Or Much, Much More?

This being a super-whizzy smartphone, the advert has a surprise up its sleeve. Clicking on it doesn’t take you away from the current page – it displays an overlay instead.

Banner Overlay

Brilliant!

This is a fantastic idea!

• You don’t leave the referring site – that means you don’t have to navigate away from a site you’re interested in.
• It’s visually exciting.  The advert doesn’t contain distracting animation, but it does animate as it unfolds down the site.
• Click-To-Call.  There’s a great big stonking call to action “CALL US NOW”.  Clicking that will make your phone dial STA’s call centre.

So why is it in the Badvertising section?

Let’s Click To Call….

Callto?

Ah.

Clicking to call doesn’t work.  It’s unlikely to work on any mobile phone.

Callto – as far as I can tell – is an unofficial URI scheme supported only by Skype.

There are two common ways to initiate a click-to-call

tel:

According to DeviceAtlas over 2,300 phones support the tel: schema

wtai:

The oldest – and most common – way of dialling from the browser.  The WAP Forum specification was laid down in the late 1990s. The syntax is slightly strange – wtai://wp/mc/ – but it works on many phones.

International

The other problem is that you have no way of knowing where in the world a user’s phone is.  You need to specify the international dialling code.  For the UK that’s +44.

Why? If the user is roaming and tries to dial 08…. at best they will be unable to connect to your number.  At worst they’ll connect to a local number who won’t be best pleased to have a bumbling English-person ringing them.

How To Fix It

Using a service like WURFL or DeviceAtlas will allow you to see whether to use tel:, wtai:, callto, or something else.

Use the international dialling code.  You can’t assume your customers are based in your country.

Use a geographical number.  Premium rate numbers like 0871 don’t come out of your customers’ bundles. They can cost much more from a mobile than from a land line.  Make sure the number you choose is suitable.

Test, test and test again.  I can’t believe that this mistake cropped up.  Callto: is such a poorly supported URI scheme, that testing on more than a handful of devices would have shown it was unsuitable.

Remember – and it pains me to point out the obvious – if your customers can’t contact you; they won’t contact you!

Capgemini Advert in the FT

Lest you think I’ve been monkeying around with screensizes, let me assure you that the image above is at exactly the same resolution that it appeared on my BlackBerry Bold. One of the most popular business devices.

Let’s take a look at the advert by itself.

Capgemini Advert

Despite the whole image being 300 pixels wide, the consultants at Capgemini have opted to use a mere 120 pixels to get their message across to the readers of the FT.

Even if your eyesight hadn’t become strained from staring at pink paper for the last 30 years, you’d find it hard to make out what the advert is saying. Let’s zoom in on those sparse 120 pixels

Zoomed In

The original image is so small, that when enlarged, it becomes obvious that the famous moto “Consulting. Technology. Outsourcing” was little more than a blur.

So, what is this advert for? The banner image shows nothing more than the logo – and poorly at that. Why would anyone click? Let’s see what happens when we do.

Oh Dear

Capgemini Home Page

Once again a mobile advert on a mobile site has taken us to a page which is definitely not mobile-friendly. The page is http://www.capgemini.com/supply-chain-management/

To compound the error, what do we spot in the lower right corner?

Flash! Argh!

The number of phones which support Adobe’s Flash Player within the browser is minuscule.  The BlackBerry is not among their number.  Nor is the sainted iPhone.

Luckily the HTC Hero, running Google’s Android, does play flash files.  Shall we take a look at what’s on offer?

Capgemini website on Android

It’s a video.  A not-at-all-boring video about supply chain management.  The video is probably very interesting to those people who read the FT and visit Capgemini’s website. You can download the video directly (warning – 15MB .flv file) or watch it here.

Conclusions

I would hope all of these points are obvious to you.

• Make your advert legible.
• Make full use of the medium.  If you’ve been given a 300×50 pixel banner – fill it.
• Give an indication of what your advert points to.  Much like Cool URIs – you need something for a human to latch on to.
• Point to a mobile site.
• If the browser can’t support certain content, make sure you have an alternative available.
• Video is a great medium for advertising.  Making mobile-friendly video isn’t hard.  You can use services like http://m.youtube.com/ to automatically make your video suitable for mobile if you don’t have the skill to do it yourself.
• Ask yourself – “What is the point of this advert?” Why would someone click on it?  What benefit will the customer get?  What benefit will the advertiser get?  If you can’t answer these questions, you’ve got a Badvertisement

That a €multi-billion firm like Capgemini can get it so wrong is very depressing.  All that talent, money and effort squandered on an advert which shows them in a very poor light.  Perhaps the FT should consider screening the adverts it places on its mobile site so as not to infuriate its readers.

A Kick Arse Advertising Campaign!

That’s pretty strong stuff. For those of you with poor eyesight, let’s zoom in on the significant detail

Oh no they didn’t!

In the UK, I’m unused to seeing adverts which directly mention their competitors – let alone attack them. But in other parts of the world it’s quite common. Personally, this sort of advert amuses me – but I do wonder how many people will find it childish and unbecoming of a global business. To say nothing of the fact that by mentioning your rival, you’re giving them free publicity.

So, with a humdinger of an advert – this is bound to lead on to an awesome site. Probably with downloadable video showing how cool the handset is, maybe some lush product shots, at the very least the basic stats on these E72 bad boys. Right?

Wrong

Advert Destination

Oh. Is that it? It’s just dumped me on the “Business Phones” page. A page which doesn’t even work well on a mobile browser. Hey, Nokia, I know the BlackBerry’s browser isn’t the best in the world – but there’s no need to rub it in!
On top of that – there’s no link to the E72. If I can be bothered to search for it, this is what I get.

Desktop E72 Page

Again, a non-mobile-friendly page which doesn’t seem to say much.

It Doesn’t Need To Be This Way

With a bit of judicious searching, I finally found my way to Nokia’s mobile formatted E72 product page.

E72 Page

This is the page that the advert should have linked to. Yes, it’s a bit dull. No, you can’t buy the phone directly from here. But at least it goes directly to the product and focuses on its features.

It Really Doesn’t Need To Be This Way

As good as that page is, there are some obvious failing. No product shots, no comparison with BlackBerry (the main thrust of the original advert), no links to buy the product.

The daft thing is, Nokia has some wonderfully designed mobile-friendly product pages.

Nokia's 5800 Page

They even – get this – have phone numbers so you can order one of their products. It’s hardly a revolutionary idea – let your customers give you money – but it’s totally absent from the first advert.

Call Me

There are a whole mish-mash of different visual styles on offer.

N900 Page

It’s probably enough to give Nokia’s branding team a coronary – but there’s no denying that these pages are visually interesting, and offer much more information in a much more engaging way than the E72 page.

N97 Page

Conclusion

Where to start…?

• Make sure your MOBILE advert links through to a MOBILE FRIENDLY page.
• If you’re a mobile phone company – this is doubly true.
• Follow up on your advert’s promise.  If you say “This product is better than Brand X” – show that.
• Make a visually appealing site.  This WWW medium isn’t paper.  You’re not charged extra for printing in colour.
• Let your customers buy your product.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  Add a phone number or an email address on there if they can’t buy directly with their phone.
• Provide as much information about your product as you can.  This is your chance to wow your customer.  Plain text and small images just won’t cut it.  Again, you’re not being charged per printed page – so go nuts.  If you can, offer some video content.
• Finally, and this is a biggie, link directly to your products page.  If I’ve clicked on an advert for a Gizmo XYZ, don’t take me to Gizmo Corp’s front page – take me directly to what I’ve said I want to see.

These are really basic points – yet we see big companies fail to deliver again and again.  Mobile advertising is big business, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at this advert.

Rather than getting bogged down in philosophy, I refer to the reason people choose Microsoft Windows to do anything public facing.

Advertisers obviously care enough about their message to craft 30 second videos, they invest millions on infrastructure to support showing them. Then they take a totally unsuitable and unstable method for playing them back – why?

It’s a phenomena I repeatedly see. Advertising screens around the world which are really only displaying one message.

They’re saying “Windows – The Worst Way To Get Your Message Across”.

However, it’s not just Windows which has the problem – each of these three photos show a PC which has failed to POST correctly. So they are stuck – forever displaying their inadequacies to thousands of passers-by. (Click to embiggen)

My real rant isn’t about Windows – it’s about the design and thinking behind such advertising screens. It would appear that each screen is driven by its own PC. What madness! The cost of hardware – let alone software – must be phenomenal.

At the moment, each screen displays exactly the same content as its neighbour. There’s no reason why a single computer couldn’t be used to drive all the screens.

I say exactly the same – the screens get progressively out of sync as the day goes on. Presumably the separate PCs don’t communicate with one and other.

The next thing that bothers me is the use of Windows.

These screens aren’t using an embedded version of Windows – they’re using XP. Now, XP is a fine OS – but it is bloated in terms of what is needed. All that is needed is a small embedded device which can be loaded with video files and set to play back.

It doesn’t need a desktop OS.  It doesn’t need anything more complicated than a display, video codecs and an Ethernet port.  This is the sort of thing for which Linux is perfect.

So, why?  Why has this system been allowed to develop?  Every day I see another screen which is broken, out of sync, or crashed.  Why has such a fragile and expensive solution become so prevalent?

The majority of these photos show TFL advertising screens managed by CBS Outdoor.  I really do wonder if they ever wander through the tube and see what a shoddy experience they are delivering.

You may have noticed this animate banner as you wander around the mobile web.

NatWest Advert

Here it is in context

NatWest Ad on Times Site

So, what do we see when we click on it?

The Good

NatWest Mobile Site

Now, this is pretty good! An attractive site, seems on brand, gives details of the benefit.  What’s this at the bottom? Could it be…?

Click To Call

Click To Call

Click to call is such basic functionality – I’m shocked that more mobile sites don’t make better use of it.  It saves the customer from having to scribble down your number or worse, try to remember it.  If you’re smart, you will set up a separate number for the mobile site so you can track how effective the site is.

Terms and Conditions

The one thing you learn from looking at your site stats is that no-one reads the terms and conditions.  However, it’s the first thing your lawyers will look for.  So make it prominent so you can’t get sued later.

While the NatWest T&Cs are fairly mobile friendly – this is where the site starts breaking down.

Terms and Conditions

Linking Out

The first problem is that the two links that are given aren’t mobile friendly.

The first appears to be a pop-up from their Polish site.

Polish Popup

The second is from their main site.

Full Site

PDF

As we go further down the T&Cs page, we see some links to further documents.

PDF

Pop quiz, hotshot, what percentage of mobiles can read PDFs? Some S60 phones can read PDF, as can Android and iPhone.  But the majority of phones in the market simply can’t access these documents.

Length

You can read the NatWest Terms and Conditions for yourself.  Around eleven thousand words!  All on one page.

Conclusions

When designing a mobile site, keep these points in mind.

• Don’t link to any non-mobile sites.
• If you have to link to non-mobile sites, ensure you give the user a warning so they know not to click if they have a less capable phone.
• Make sure that the formats you use on your site can be accessed via mobile.  Convert PDFs to HTML if you can.
• While you may need to have Terms and Conditions on your site, they should never be more prominent than your main call to action.  In this case, the “Call Us Now” button should be shown to the user before the T&Cs.
• Consider splitting pages in to “chunks”. Many phones will have a low memory limit and won’t be able to display your pages.
• Even if they can display the page, scrolling through hundreds of lines can be a painful experience.

Overall, this is an excellent microsite which is let down by a few silly mistakes.

So, I was a little surprised to see this advert for #tweetsgiving on my mobile.

What is tweetsgiving?

For now, let’s ignore the perils of assuming that your country is the entire market place. It’s a common problem which, sadly, is prevalent in the USA. I clicked on the banner like a good consumer – hoping I’d find out what #tweetsgiving was.

Unavailable

I’ve talked before about having your service ready for the floods of people who are going to visit. You only get one chance to make a first impression – this first impression says “We’re broken”. Would you trust this site with your money? With your time? Would you click on the same banner again?

Well, I’m, a fool. I waited a few hours. Teething problems, I reckoned. Later on in the day – when I saw the same banner – I clicked.

Oh Dear

I was greeted by an unfriendly error page.

Third time’s the charm. In my pursuit of finding the worst Mobile Badvertising out there – for you, dear reader – I clicked. Once more unto the breach…

That's It?

So this is what the advertising campaign is for? A block of text. No images. Nothing to convince me that it’s genuine. No details about the charity – if it is a charity – or the projects in Tanzania. And – were I charitably minded enough to pay – no method of payment for those outside the USA.

How To Fix This

• Friendly error pages.  Things break, that’s a fact of life – but when they do, ensure that they fail gracefully.  Make sure that your error pages are still useful to your prospective customers.
• If your site is broken – or under severe strain – withdraw the advert until you are sure you can satisfy demand.
• If your offer is limited by region – try to ensure that it is never seen outside that region.
• Given that the Internet is international – offer alternative ways for foreign customers to pay you.
• Make your site attractive.  You don’t need to go overboard, but a few images, links to other sites or pages, downloadable content, will attract more customers that plain prose.
• If you’re asking for money for a charity – show your potential donors that you are genuine.  In this case a link to the charity’s site would have helped.  In the UK, all charities have to be registered – I don’t know if the USA does something similar.

While I’m sure that the aims are laudable, this is truly a perfect example of Mobile Badvertising.  The site doesn’t work and, when it does, you wish that you hadn’t bothered.  What a waste.

Bootnote

There is one good thing about this Badvertising. The link to Quattro Wireless does go to their mobile page and not to some Flash-ridden abomination.

Quattro Wireless's mobile page

In this animated GIF, an advert for Lexus, we see a call to action which says “Click Here”.

Lexus Advert

Would it not be obvious to readers that this is an advert? That adverts are clickable?

Perhaps not. Let’s see how it is laid out on Reuters Mobile.

Advert on the Reuters Mobile site

Utterly bizarrely, this image isn’t clickable! The user will try in vain to click where it says “Click Here” and get nowhere – they have click on the word Lexus.

Take a look at the source code, if you don’t believe me.

HTML Source Code

Make Your Advert Easy To Access

Seems obvious, no? The bigger the target area, the more chance a user will be able to click on it. This is a big usability issue – especially on phones touchscreens, trackpads and rollerballs.

We see this issue in HTML forms as well. In this example, it’s easy to select the “Male” option simply because the label is clickable.

The “Female” option is harder because you need to have the dexterity to accurately position your cursor over the tiny radio button as opposed to a larger target.

For a chance to win an AMAZING prize – click this dot . It’s not the easiest thing in the world. Especially on a mobile device where the cursor may only move in large steps.

What To Do?

Having a hyperlinked word or phrase under an advert certainly isn’t going to hurt.  When it’s the only way to access the content, you risk confusing your users’ mental model about how images work.

Above all, never say “Click Here” if there’s nowhere to click.

I was extremely proud to be ask to represent Vodafone on the “Operators’ Panel” – but I’ll let others review my slot.

I want to concentrate on the four aspects of the day I found fascinating.  As ever, these views are my own.

Mövenpick

As some of you know, I boycott Nestlé. So I was unable to try any of the sponsor’s ice-cream.


However, what they said about their mobile strategy shocked me.
They don’t have one.
The CEO talked about how he only vaguely knew what an iPhone was, how he didn’t know how many mobile users his site got, and that he couldn’t see the need for a mobile strategy!

Pretty strong stuff for a mobile love-in.

Then, it struck me; he’s a normob. Not only that, but he runs a direct to business company. What’s the point in him having any customer facing proposition.
When was the last time you went to Cadbury’s, Kelloggs, or Carte D’or’s website – let alone bothered to see if they had a mobile site?  Would having m.movenpick.com bring him any business?  Mobile companies need to start talking the language of “old” business if they want to make any headway.

Pepsi

The makers of sugar water made a refreshing change. They talked enthusiastically about their QR campaign. The created a mobile friendly site, stuck QR codes on 400 million Pepsi cans and bottle, and hired Kelly Brook (who?). The results were staggering. Over 12 million views of their “viral” videos, and hits to their site exceeding any previous promotion.

Pepsi's QR Code

Of particular interest to me was the way they tracked usage. Each SKU had a unique QR code – so they could tell if they were getting more hits from 330ml cans or 2 litre bottles.

Pepsi described QR codes as being like Marmite – but after the success of their campaign, more of the company were in the “Love It” camp.  The campaign did seem fairly male focused – their strategy of putting a pouting woman in a tight dress certainly encouraged one demographic to find out more.  Pepsi’s sexist adverts have drawn a lot of criticism – and rightly so – I can’t help but wonder if it would have been twice as successful had they also put a hunk in a tight t-shirt on there as well as / instead of an occasional swimwear designer.

Flirtomatic

I’ve never seen a bad presentation from Flirtomatic. Mark Curtis, the CEO, was no exception. It’s not surprising they’ve recently won smaarto’s Mobile Web Award.

Flirtomatic

Flirtomatic started out with a J2ME application. Thinking they could have complete control of the UI and customer experience, they quickly realised the developing apps is a high investment activity with very low penetration and thus low returns.

So they made the decision to go purely to mobile web and it has been a phenomenal success. They’re now profitable in the UK and are expanding into the US.
The reach that a mobile website gives them far exceeds any application, development costs are lower, upgrading customers is more simple and the experience can still be tailored to each phone.

All that being said, they are “reluctantly” looking at Android and iPhone development. From what I can understand it’s more about fitting in with the expectations of the hype-cycle than expecting any serious RoI.

At the moment, the top handset on Flirtomatic accounts for just 5% of page views, the rest are under 1%.  As Mark put it, “there is no long tail – the whole thing is a tail!”

Adverts

Various speakers made reference to mobile internet advertising

• If you advertise a mobile service on a mobile service, you’ll get a good response. Mostly because you’re targetting customers who know how to work their phones.
• You can’t simply transfer your web banner adverts to mobile – campaigns have to be carefully considered.
• Mobile needs its own distinct way of advertising. Banners are for the web, commercials are for TV.
• Mark Curtic thought that mobile adverts should take on a Burma Shave style of sequential adverts.  Ensure that each advert a user sees relates to a previous one – even across different sites.

Thoughts

• Cost. As I was presenting, I got a free ticket – others had to pay ~£350 for the half day conferennce. I do find these conferences useful, but are they £350 more useful than a similarly targetted BarCamp? For now, they are. But as more and more “professionals” start going to BarCamps, I think we’ll see enhanced value for money at paid-for conferences.
• Lack of women. Women make up 50% of our customers. There were a large number of women in the audience. Yet there was only one on the stage. The technology industry really has to tackle this sexism.

Overall, a thoroughly useful and enjoyable day.

This makes life difficult for advertisers. Not only do they have to ensure that what they’re showing is applicable in the viewer’s country, but also that it’s legal and written in the correct language. If they don’t, at best they’ve wasted their inventory, at worst, they’re breaking the law.

Google runs this advert for its BlackBerry software.

Google's Advert (English)

It’s a perfectly fine advert. But, on occasion, I see this…

Google's Advert (French)

Je parlez un petit pois de Francais. Mais mon GCSEs were trop many years ago pour me to remember more than “Je voudrais un croque Monsieur, sil vous plait”.

To compound the error, when I click on the link I get this.

Straight To Download

I’m normally not a fan of interstitials – and a direct download link is usually very welcome. In this case it would have made sense to show an information page which allowed the customer to change to a more appropriate language.

At the very least, Google should use the description field to say exactly what it is I’m downloading.  There is only the barest mention that the application is in French. Anyone installing this is going to be faced with a bewildering foreign language in their interface.

Here’s the Google Maps mobile web page – note the option to change language.

Change The Language

One minor nit pick – if you don’t speak English, the words “Change Language” won’t mean anything to you.  The icon isn’t particularly helpful either.  Perhaps choosing a flag or writing the words in several well spoken languages would prevent this confusion.

Solving The Problem

There are three ways you can tell what language to display.

1. IP Geo-Location
2. Header
3. Referring site

IP Lookup

It is possible to geolocate an IP address. This maps your IP address to your rough location. There are a few problems with this.

1. Accuracy.  At best, it will tell you which major city you’re near.  That’s usually good enough, especially when determining language.
2. ISP location.  You may be in Germany, but your ISP (mobile or not) may be allocating you an IP from their home country.  If your BlackBerry is connected to a corporate BES, your IP will be where your IT department is based.
3. Roaming.  You’re a Brit, your phone has roamed on to a German network, you’re looking for reviews of restaurants in France.  Which country should you count as for the purposes of advertising?

Header

Every browser sends a website detailed information about itself in the HTTP headers. Here’s what my BlackBerry would have sent Google.

What Does Your Browser Say About You?

I’ve circled the accept-language header – it quite clearly says I speak British English. The W3C recommends using this field for language preferences (amongst other uses).  When your phone starts up for the first time and asks you to pick a language – it’s not just changing the phone’s UI, it will also modify the browser’s headers so you get content that’s acceptable to you.

If you’re interested, you can check your browser’s HTTP headers.

Problems

• You may be on a borrowed phone
• You may have set your phone incorrectly
• Your phone may express a preference for multiple languages

Referring Site

A simple solution is to use the language of the site the advert is placed on.  If I were on a French site – it would make sense to show me an advert in French.

The Real Solution(s)

An advert that your audience can’t read is a waste of everyone’s time and bandwidth.

• Use all the available information to determine where a customer is and what language they speak.
• If you’re not sure, consider an advert without wording.  In the above case “Google + BlackBerry = ♥”.
• Don’t force a user into downloading without checking their preferences.
• Allow a user to switch languages either before download or within the application.

More Mobile Badvertising