Hey, have you heard the word? Mobile is where it’s at! Where’s your app? Where’s your site? Wait, what?
You’re selling a service or product with a target audience of 14 to 70 and you DON’T currently have a mobile app or mobile enhanced site? Well c’mon Jeeves, get with the times!
Seriously, your company should at least have a mobile enabled site. The increased ownership and use of smart phones in a huge age range is ridunkulous. Man, my dad is 76 and all over his iPhone! My 7 year old can show her mom how to do things on an iPhone. That’s a huge age range and that’s just two people in a huge demographic.
But you might be confused as to what you need right now. First off, you should probably have a mobile enhanced website. That’s one that shows up nicely on a smart phone. I’m not talking about your site being zoomed way the heck out in mobile Safari, but a website that detects and redirects people to a mobile version. Yes, there is code out there that will detect what browser and platform you are viewing a site on and can send you to a new location based on that detection. So, redirect your site visitors to a separate page or site that’s been nicely designed for a mobile environment.
Okay, so once you’ve gotten that settled and functioning, it’s probably time to start thinking about taking the next step… a Mobile Application. Apps are device specific environments where your customers can take advantage or your phones features and OS – specifically, GPS, maps and push notifications. A well designed app can engage your customer, educate your audience and become an indispensable tool for your employees.
So, we’ll let you think on this for a few and we’ll be back in a couple days to discuss more on how mobile sites differ from mobile apps and how you can get what you need.
Still confused or need help with your mobile strategy? Drop us a line and let’s talk about it. In the meantime, head over to roguebrands.com and see what we’ve done for companies like yours.
~ sMc & cN
Famous words made popular by UB40, but they help set the stage for some motion work we did for Cameron Hughes, a Northern California winery. We’ll post the finished piece shortly.
It’s amazing, sometimes, the process it takes to get from A to B. And with every new client, you approach it with the same experience you have generated for the last 20 years and you think ‘I’ve done this before.’ And that’s exactly how we perceived the group from AudienceWise when they approached us to build their brand, collateral and web work from scratch. But working so closely with this client was truly a learning experience – for both sides. AudienceWise is a seasoned group of individuals who core focus is conversion optimization and mobile web strategies. I admire them because they know exactly what they want, exactly who their client base is and exactly how to talk to them. We’ve posted some of the collaborative work here of the journey we took with AudienceWise. We’re looking forward to a long partnership with these guys. Check ‘em out.
Tila would be proud.
Rogue iPad InfoGraphic from Rogue on Vimeo.
Something we developed to show the importance of a mobile strategy.
I thought that some of these were interesting and relatable to a naming/identity project we are currently working on, so I wanted to share a few of the more interesting ones… all courtesy of Wikipedia.
BTW – Here’s the link if you want the whole enchilada (no pun intended).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_name_etymologies
37signals – Web development company; named for the 37 radiotelescope signals identified by astronomer Paul Horowitz as potential messages from extraterrestrial intelligence.
Adidas – from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.
Atari – named from the board game Go. “Atari” is a Japanese word to describe a position where an opponent’s stones are in danger of being captured. It is similar, though not identical, to “check” in chess. The original games company was American but wanted a Japanese-sounding name.
Blaupunkt – Blaupunkt (“Blue dot”) was founded in 1923 under the name “Ideal”. Its core business was the manufacturing of headphones. If the headphones came through quality tests, the company would give the headphones a blue dot. The headphones quickly became known as the blue dots or blaue Punkte. The quality symbol would become a trademark and the trademark would become the company name in 1938.
Cisco – short for San Francisco.
Coca-Cola – derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the ‘K’ of kola to ‘C’ to make the name look better.
Crabtree & Evelyn – toiletry company named after gardener John Evelyn, and the tree that bears Crabapples
Facebook – name stems from the colloquial name of books given to newly enrolled students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other better.
GEICO – from Government Employees Insurance Company
Häagen-Dazs – Name was invented in 1961 by ice-cream makers Reuben and Rose Mattus of the Bronx “to convey an aura of the old-world traditions and craftsmanship”. The name has no meaning.
IKEA – a composite of the first letters in the Swedish founder Ingvar Kamprad’s name in addition to the first letters of the names of the property and the village in which he grew up: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.
Lego – combination of the Danish “leg godt”, which means to “play well”. Lego also means “I put together” in Latin, but Lego Group claims this is only a coincidence and the etymology of the word is entirely Danish. Years before the little plastic brick was invented, Lego manufactured wooden toys.
Mattel – a portmanteau of the founders names Harold “Matt” Matson and Elliot Handler.
Mercedes – from the first name of the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who distributed cars of the early Daimler company around 1900.
Nintendo – Nintendo is the transliteration of the company’s Japanese name, nintendou. The first (nin) can be translated as to “entrusted”; ten-dou means “heaven”.
Nokia – started as a wood-pulp mill, the company expanded into producing rubber products in the Finnish city of Nokia. The company later adopted the city’s name.
Pepsi – named from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
Reebok – alternate spelling of rhebok (Pelea capreolus), an African antelope.
Smart – Swatch + Mercedes + Art
Starbucks – named after Starbuck, a character in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick, also a variation of Starbo; at the time, a local mining camp north of Seattle.[57]
Taco Bell – named after founder Glen Bell.
Virgin – founder Richard Branson started a magazine called Student while still at school. In his autobiography, Losing My Virginity, Branson says that when they were starting a business to sell records by mail order, “one of the girls suggested: ‘What about Virgin? We’re complete virgins at business.’”
–cN
Burritos at the Mexican place up the street seem to spark the best conversations. Take today for instance… as we were enjoying, yet another, cilantro-infused burrito, the topic of mobile applications vs. mobile websites came up. The debate was which way to go on a specific project. The easiest choice is for some is, well… do nothing. After all, anyone with a browser enabled smartphone can visit an existing website, right? But doing so raises a few issues. For example, pages are designed for the desktop experience – images are large, text is small, navigating the site can be difficult, and of course, some parts of the site simply will not load or work correctly. For these reasons, surfing the web via mobile device with a smaller screen and limited features of some operating systems and devices can be… let’s just say challenging.
So, the question becomes “if I am going to offer my customers a mobile experience, which do I offer – mobile site or mobile app?” That is a great first question to start with because it helps you define your audience. The choice with the largest reach is the mobile site. It can be accessed via any device—iPhone, Palm, Blackberry or Android. These devices support an open source framework making sites universally accessible. On the flipside, if your audience is niche in nature and you want to reach them by a particular operating system or device, maybe the mobile app is the best way to go. Keep in mind mobile apps need to be developed for each type of device.
Back to that all-important question, “who is my audience?” Apps, in general, will provide a more feature rich experience because they can work natively with the device’s operating system. So, if the experience requires interaction or engages the user as would a game or a utility (such as a banking app with an ATM locator), then the mobile app would most likely be more successful; however, as mobile browsers are becoming increasingly more sophisticated with support for HTML5 (with geo-location capabilities), that line continues to blur. If you are offering a content or information rich site and it needs to be searchable and search-friendly, the mobile site is your best choice.
So, you’re left with a choice with no clear answers. Whichever direction you choose, there are clear advantages and disadvantages to both and it definitely involves thoughtful research and consideration. On one side you have a mobile site that generally costs less up front and can work on all devices that have web browsers. Mobile site content is searchable and search engine friendly and brands can publish what they want, when they want with no app store approval— a notable barrier to entry. With mobile apps, you have complete control over the user experience and your app can use all of your device’s capabilities—camera, photos, address book, etc. Plus, an app can raise your brand awareness and create revenue for your company. And let’s face it, apps are definiltey a hot topic and can create substantial revenue for the developer and company that releases them. Mashable.com states that the mobile app market could surge to $17.5 Billion by 2012. That’s alot of burritos.
–cN
Capture your day and share it with the world. What would you record? Your walk to work? Your daily jog? The sun setting on your front door? We hope to capture a little slice of our day and contribute to this very cool project.
