Mobile web usage is on a steep curve northward and everyone from major corporations and small companies continue to push mobile device web usage for good reason – more eyeballs with more time on websites will yield better sales and hopefully better revenues. In a recent study Comscore points out that 30 million Americans accessed the Internet from a mobile device in January 2007.
There is nothing more convenient than traveling and being able to find what you need while on your mobile device or to get your personal chores or business affairs in order on your mobile while you are commuting from place to place. For and end-user, mobile web access is a great convenience and a big time saver. For a business owner, it is the difference between gaining or losing a sale or enriching that ever so valuable client relationship to extract more lifetime revenue. For major corporations, it’s about retaining existing relationships in increasingly competitive business environments. In an economy dominated by services, to be competitive, you must offer better services, and mobile web is one way companies are reaching out.
Mobile device web access + mobile search = Sales.
It’s true: while on a recent vacation, I pulled up Google.com web search on my mobile device. After typing in a specific local query: restaurant + town + state (to find a restaurant), there was a result. A local restaurant’s phone number was readily available right in the search result and I booked dinner for two immediately. The restaurant got my business because they were available through a mobile web search and because they had a clearly defined search result with relevant business information.
Major corporations are reaching out too. In today’s New York Post, Citibank has a full page add on page 13 (New York Late City Final Edition), prompting mobile phone access to their website stating “not caring what time the bank closes” – such that with their mobile website access, all of your banking problems are solved day or night, wherever you are. Now, you don’t even have to have your laptop with you!
Here is a preview of what they are offering through mobile access:
Citi Mobile gives you the convenience of banking virtually any time, anywhere. You can use it to pay bills, transfer money, see your balances and activity, find a Financial Center or ATM and get Customer Service-right on your cell phone.
Web access from wireless phones and PDA’s is really reaching new levels and the major handheld producers are reaching out with the major service providers. Even the most basic of telephones are now showing standard features of access to mobile web and email. There are various “browser” versions, but all of the major providers are striving to provide advanced equipment and services at affordable prices.
Here is a brief sampling of some that are out there and I can tell you that consumers are hot to trot and pick up these devices and services and utilize them:
Verizon Wireless pushes mobile web access dubbed “Mobile Web 2.0”
Mobile Media
- Mobile Web 2.0
- Get It Now®
- Picture and Text Messaging
- Email, Mobile IM, Mobile Chat
Cingular (The New AT&T 
) offers MEdia Net:
Q. What is MEdia Net?
A. MEdia Net gives you access to all the cool things you can do with your wireless phone-email, Web sites, games, and more. It is wireless Internet access for your wireless device.
- Mail & Messaging: Check your Yahoo! Mail, MSN Hotmail and chat with friends with Yahoo! Messenger and Upoc.
- Sports: Get the latest scores from CBS SportsLine and ESPN.
- Ringtones, Games, and Graphics: Personalize your phone by downloading your favorites.
- News & Finance: Stay informed with round-the-clock headlines from CNN.
- Entertainment: Get local movie times and reviews, dining recommendations, and more.
- Weather & Travel: Check your forecast from The Weather Channel, get flight times, and traffic reports.
So how do you make sense of the mobile web as a business owner?
The mobile web and the access that consumers have to it will take many forms. Some wireless providers only have “skeleton” networks, while others have full fledged World Wide Web access with normal HTML browsers (albeit with smaller screens). But as people go mobile in any form, there should be more eyeballs on your brand and more opportunities to reach out to existing and new clients. The better prepared you are for mobile devices and these networks, the better positioned you are to succeed at capturing new customers and communicating with your current customers. Users will be in MEdia Net and Verizon’s Mobile Web 2.0 – it’s inevitable, it’s well beyond 1st adopters and “mavens” as Gladwell would have it.
Search Marketing Sidenote to Citibank: A Google search for “Citibank Mobile” does not bring up the site in Google organically and not even a paid search result! If this is a new ad campaign, I would not neccassarily expect an organic result, but certainly I would buy some sponsored ads around it. I’m sure Citibank is spending tons on banners and other portions of the campaign, so why not cover yourself with a couple of paid keywords?
Citibank is not taking advantage of the dot-mobi extension: http://www.citibank.mobi/ that page comes up as “server not found”. Why don’t they just register this top level domain and forward it to the area that they want people to go to? I covered some of the benefits of this strategy in another recent dot-mobi post.
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Whoops, the link at the end of my comment didn’t work properly. It should have said .