Waking up to Wireless

Patrick Moorhead, a Director in our Emerging Media group, authored a great piece on the state of the mobile web for our Digital Outlook Report.  Specifically, he focuses on WAP and the improving consumer experience it provides (when done right).  It’s definitely worth a read for marketers and publishers:

The mobile Web has grown in fits and starts since it first began to appear on the minds and handsets of American mobile consumers almost five years ago. Questions of how to build experiences on the handset’s small screen, how similar or different mobile should be from HTML, and how consumers would actually use mobile services have been persistent questions in the course of growth for Wireless Application Protocal (WAP)

The consumer experience of WAP and the mobile Web has been disappointing for many reasons. Poor, non-intuitive user interfaces slow network speeds, and a general lack of understanding about how to even go about accessing digital content from mobile devices has created a stigma in the mind of many consumers.

And yet, 2007 witnessed a striking growth in the availability and use of WAP content for mobile devices. Following are some guidelines for making things work in WAP, based on what behaviors consumers are involved in when they access the mobile Web.

The Difference Between WAP and HTML (And Why It Matters)
There is a lot of confusion on this subject, so before beginning a discussion about what to do with WAP, it;s helpful to get clear about the difference between WAP and online HTML, and why, while at first blush WAP seems very limited, it in fact provides for a profoundly better mobile Web experience.

First off, WAP is a data transfer software along the lines of HTTP for the non-mobile Web. By definition, WAP is designed to function under two critical circumstances common in wireless devices: one, limited data transfer speeds because of low bandwidth and two, small, low resolution display screens on the mobile device. It is because of these two factors that experiencing Web sites designed for the PC browser often disappoint the mobile user. Today’s online sites are loaded up with heavy graphics, HTML and XML scripting, and intended for at least 1024 pixel wide resolution on the screen (most mobile devices have less than one third of this).

The programming language used by designers for WAP is WML (Wireless Markup Language). Think of this as HTML for the WAP environment. There are a number of differences between HTML and WML, most of which revolve around slimming down and cutting out many components of HTML that are not useful or required for WAP/WML applications.

The most apparent difference between WML and Web based HTML is the concept of WML cards and the “card/deck” metaphor that is the foundation of WAP. In WAP browsing, a user is not loading a “page” in the sense of a Web page – instead the user is loading a “stack” or “deck” of small screens all at once. Cards effectively implement multiple WML screens within a single page. WAP browsers display only one card at a time, but they load a page file (called a deck) that contains multiple cards in one transaction. Loading multiple cards at once caches potential screen views locally on the WAP browser to reduce the need for network requests.

In addition, one network request to fetch a file the size of a typical HTML page will generally execute faster than a series of requests for much smaller pieces of the file. In these ways, WAP’s implementation of cards and decks is a clever optimization of the limited bandwidth on today’s wireless networks. The problem is many designers and programmers do not approach WAP design in this way, instead treating it the same way they treat HTML design, with a strategy of single pages loaded up with links, functions and graphics (hence the many “wireless” sites that continue to deliver poor user experience and functionality).

With the understanding that WAP design is intentionally stripped down, mobile marketers can utilize the structure of WAP / WML to deliver efficiency, speed and relevancy to end users.

Making WAP Work for the User
Part of the challenge with building WAP experiences that will succeed has been understanding the role of the device and how the consumer uses it. Early executions in WAP tended to take the approach of replicating online experiences, a critical misstep. Additionally, early WAP design approaches failed to accurately assess and respond to how, when, where and why people would engage with data and content via a mobile device. This results in an unwieldy, cluttered user experience that does not offer the end user value, given the context of their consumption behavior. If we start by identifying these problems, we can define better strategies for envisioning content and functionality that will serve the consumer – and the brands’ - objectives.

In most cases, the mobile consumer is using data and communications services while doing other things: waiting, walking, running late, while lost, while on the town with friends. They may be searching for directions, or trying to locate information critical to an immediate task, delving into info that can be had quickly, even killing time. About half of these “other things” behaviors classify as “tool” functions – I’m trying to DO something.

The other half of the time, are “passive” moments when the consumer is waiting to do something else, and seeking to pass that time via a quick piece of content like a sports score, or maybe to learn about the place or activity they are in the process of reaching. In all cases it is important to note two critical factors; one, the mobile content and functionality the consumer is engaged with is NOT the primary focus of their attention at that moment and, two, no matter what the consumer is doing with mobile, their attention span will have a defined limit. You could have the most compelling content or function possible, but the consumer will still, eventually, get on with the “other thing” they were planning to be engaged in.

This second point is especially critical in thinking about the types of experiences a brand may offer the consumer in the mobile environment. It is unrealistic to attempt to capture a consumer’s attention for any amount of time in mobile. Rather, designing content that is bite-sized and intentionally disposable is the road towards higher consumption and higher perceived value for that content. 

Who is getting WAP right, and why?
Getting the WAP experience right for consumers requires designers and publishers who understand and embrace the lean and mean efficiency that WAP/WML offers via the “card/deck” structure. Additionally, successful publishers and brands are jumping off from that knowledge into designing content, services and user experiences that strip away components from their online sites and focus on critical items that allow users to derive value from them quickly and easily, and that meet needs of a consumer on the go, with limited time, and with attention focused someplace else. Here are a handful of such publishers and brands, and how their WAP designs show they are taking these ideas to heart.

Major League Baseball, wap.mlb.com
A product of MLB Advanced Media, the League’s mobile site takes advantage of WAP’s lean efficiency to the fullest. Graphics are limited to branding elements at the top of pages; main page navigation is always the same format – want news? Hit the “1” key. Scoreboard? Hit the “6” key. This standardization eliminates repeat users needing to scroll through all of the main screen content. Even if they do, the links are simple, easy to read, and highly descriptive, so users only invest in clicks for things they know they want to get.

One of the best features of this site is the scoreboard and play-by-play. By taking full advantage of the “card/deck” architecture, it’s very fast and easy to get real time or near real time scores from several games at once, because all of the games from, say, the National League, come down together, allowing one refresh to update all the games in the conference. In a specific game page, the super-light interface allows for scoring to be instantly updated (in text form) giving the experience of “watching” a play-by-play version of a game the user is not attending. Easily keeping track of other MLB games is exactly the kind of activity a user who is at the ballpark would love to engage in on a Sunday afternoon.

Facebook, m.facebook.com
Facebook, the popular online social networking site, is also making great use of WAP and the mobile Web. Along the lines of the MLB, Facebook has taken great care to scale back or eliminate features from the online version that would clutter, complicate or bog down the mobile experience. Knowing about friends’ current status and recent activities, basic profile information about yourself and other users, and the ability to view others’ photo collections are the primary features of the Facebook mobile platform – eliminating all of the power and processor-intensive applications and communications features.

Adding to this sound approach, Facebook has gone one step further by optimizing certain versions and layouts for certain types of consumer devices. Surf to Facebook.com from an iPhone, and the service “sniffs out” the iPhone browser and serves up an interface specifically designed for the larger screen and finger powered Apple device—buttons for this interface were specifically sized to nicely “surround” the average person’s fingertip. By contrast, accessing Facebook’s platform from a Blackberry gives a different, but similarly tailored experience. Leveraging Blackberry’s legendary background-sync technology, once a user has successfully logged into Facebook from the Blackberry, the platform stays currents with friends’ status, photos uploads, group newsfeeds and so on, meaning that upon returning to the Facebook browser, no refresh is required.

YELP Mobile, mobile.yelp.com
As any frequent business traveler will tell you, one of the biggest challenges they face is finding places to eat in unfamiliar cities. Not just places to eat – good places to eat. And near the hotel.

Yelp.com, an online service that finds local businesses and organizes them by quality and quantity of consumer-generated reviews, has the answer to this problem. Its online site harnesses the power of both social media and Web 2.0, allowing users to search for keywords (bar, Chinese food, car wash) and returning local results by zip code, neighborhood, and other critieria. Online, all listings are linked to a floating GoogleMaps mashup to additional context and relevance.

Yelp Mobile is another great example of a publisher retooling its services for fast, relevant performance in the hand of a mobile consumer. The WAP site strips away much of the online features (serving up static screen grabs of the map interface as opposed to a live GoogleMaps window as online) but retains the core functionality of the product. Just as with the online site, users can search locally by keyword and slice-and-dice results many different ways, yet the trimmed down interface and no nonsense page design makes it lightning fast.

Yelp Mobile asked “what would people want to do with our site on the phone?”. The answer is simple – “I want help finding good local businesses and services – not from advertising, but from other people’s recommendations. I want all of that really fast, intuitive and delivered to my phone, so I don’t have to pull out my laptop during a business dinner to find a local brew pub.” Yelp has taken advantage of mobile to meet just these kinds of user demands.

Making Web Content Work for WAP
There are a number of critical success factors for brands and publishers seeking to enter the mobile Web arena this year. First, understand that WAP/WML is different than the Web, and with good reason. By understanding how and why WAP is what it is, and using that to its full advantage, brands and publishers can avoid the common pitfall of trying to make the mobile experience one that replicates what’s happening online.

Second, understanding that the mindset and need state of the mobile consumer is fundamentally different than that of a PC-based Web surfer will allow brands and publishers to begin to focus on only that which is relevant to the mobile consumer – providing fast, easy-to-use tools to accomplish things on the run, or providing bite-sized, disposable content experiences. Realizing that mobile consumers are in a fundamentally different state than those accessing the Web via PCs will help advertisers and publishers design a better WAP experience, which will drive consumer adoption and positive experiences with mobile Web products.