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What is it about the mobile web? Plenty of people walk around with a phone that can get onto it – but only a third of them have enabled web access, according to Forrester. And hardly any use this facility. Indeed, of those people who have mobile web access, two thirds never, ever use it.

With an almost saturated market for mobile phones and £22bn spent on 3G licenses, this is an area that cannot be ignored by network operators and they are aggressively driving forward both opportunities and quality of service.

Forrester points to strong consumer interest in mobile services – O2 say 45% of subscribers use data services other than SMS and Vodafone Live say they have 4 million regular visitors to their portal. Yet, currently, the promise of the next generation is not being fulfilled.

Why is this? And is it worth your brand investing in mobile services?

The barriers

The truth is the mobile web is still not that easy to use. This is especially true if you take the likes of O2 Active and Vodafone Live out of the equation – and some would say that the policy of selective access to content (their ‘walled gardens’) rules them out anyway.

And we’re still waiting for consistent standards. We all know where to find the browser on a PC, but you only need to check out a few different mobiles to realise it’s not that easy on a phone. There’s also no denying that access speeds are nothing like what we’re used to in our ubiquitous broadband-networked world.

Then, if you do actually manage to get to a browser and type a URL in, how many of the sites you choose to visit are actually usable? Hardly any of them, sadly. Most of them are very difficult to navigate and offer a poor level of service.

The final problem is that the relatively high cost – and confusion over this cost – of mobile web use means that people are wary of going online using their phone. This means the service you provide must be particularly useful or distracting to get beyond this.

So what are the possibilities for your business?

What should you do if your business wants to get ahead of the game? At a basic level, you could start by thinking about what customers would find valuable if they visited your company’s website via their mobile phone. Would it be your share price or product demos? Providing this kind of information in a usable format isn’t difficult to do. A good place to start for help is dotMobi’s Switch On! Guide.

In the longer term, it’s worth considering what services you could provide that particularly leverage mobility and the functions of the handset. These should be useful applications rather than marketing activities. One good example would be a service from banks that gives customers the ability to manage their money from their mobile phone. Another, more famous example is a simplified version of the eBay.co.uk website that allows customers to bid and buy via their phone.

So, can your business offer a service that’s useful to mobile users?

For more information or to discuss how mobile could work for you, call us on 020 7404 4490 or email moot@rufusleonard.com

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