State of the Mobile Web in India - September 2008
Posted on November, 8 at 12:01 pm
Top 10 sites are beginning to stabilize in India when it comes to mobile websites. In the last month’s mobile web ranking report we saw 1 change. This month there was a change but only in terms of ranking. Gmail went up to 3 from 4th place where as Yahoo slipped from number 3 to 4. my.opera.com came up to 8 from 9 while youtube.com slipped from 8 to 9.
Google now holds all top three positions as gmail.com got ahead of yahoo.com for the 3rd spot.
Source: opera.com
Posted in News | No Comments »
Can Google remain immune to global financial crisis?
Posted on October, 27 at 2:36 pm
Will Google be immune from the current global financial crisis which is considered as the worst since the Great Depression? Will “advertiser of last resort” be financially viable to the cash crunch advertisers, who are taking all steps to save their last penny.
Let us see some of the latest news that is going to throw some light on the present situation:
- Yahoo announced this week that it is going to layoff 10% of its employees.
- Adbrite is going to layoff 40 of its 100 employees
- Online ad spending in Britain went down from $575 million to $497 million in the first 6 months of this year. Remember, Britain is the most advanced market for online advertising.
In the beginning of the crisis it seemed that online ad spending might not be affected as advertisers would prefer online advertising then newspapers, television or radio. Looking at the present state of affairs it does not seems true. The financial crisis is so unpredictable that nothing can be said for sure. It will be foolish to say that some companies might not be affected by it. In reality some will be affected more and some less but the pain of the crisis will be felt by all. Google is going to be in the later category.
Companies cannot stop advertising altogether in spite of the financial mess they are in. More and more advertisers would rather shift their spending online where they can have a complete control over the spending and conversions. Google’s text ads is targeted, relevant and overall could be measured which is why it will be their favorite choice.
One advertising medium that is likely to be hit hard due to present financial crisis is ads used for the branding purposes. This might include banner, video, interstitials, popups ads where conversions is hard to measure.
Posted in Getting into Roots | 1 Comment »
Picsquare.com: The website review
Posted on October, 26 at 2:23 pm
Picsquare is a website through which one could:
- Share Photos between friends on net
- Order prints online and get them delivered anywhere in India
The above 2 functions could be done through this website. All you have to do is to register (Small Form), upload photos, share with friends or send prints in India.
About:
Picsquare is headquartered in Bangalore. Manish Agrawal & Kartik Jain Co-founded this venture way back in 2005.
Money Funda:
The major source of revenue for Picsquare is:
- Members order for photo prints
- Personalized Merchandise items like mug, greeting cards etc.
Website Usability:
Picsquare was awarded as “Best Designed Website in online photo prints category” by PC World India in May 2008. This is why I had to take a closer look at its usability.
Home Page:
The most important factor for home page is “Introduction”. A clear introduction is right now missing on the home page of Picsquare.com. The introduction lets your audience know what your website all about is. This also creates an identity for the remainder of the website. Once I looked the page closely I was able to figure out but not before spending half a minute.
Then I tried to see the homepage size (kb) and the results were not very positive. In total it was 286kb which is not good as the website is targeted towards Indians who don’t have very high speed Internet connections. The website uses very heavy css files (17kb), Lot of images (64kb) and tons of JavaScript includes(171kb).
Other then home page the website looks fairly good. “How It Works” page is done very neatly and really gives an idea “How Picsquare Works”. Forms on the website are also properly done.
Website: Picsquare
Note: I am working on a common usability meter. Would update all the posts with it once complete.
Posted in Website Reviews | 1 Comment »
Basics of HomePage Design
Posted on October, 21 at 1:58 pm
Homepage is the most important area of a website. The primary task of a home page should be:
- Introduction
- Announcements
- Navigation
- Benefits and Offers
Even if users are landing on inner pages from search engine or external links, they turn to homepage to know what the website does. Homepage is also one of the most visited areas of a website. Extra effort and attention is required to design a usable home page.
On an average a user spends 25-35 seconds on homepage which is why designing homepage is a complex task. The homepage should be able to make its point quickly and effectively and that too in 25-35 seconds. In this time a visitor has to go through introduction, announcements and figure out where to go next.
Lets us have a look at some of the essentials that must be present on all types of home pages:
- Introduction: Short and crisp introduction to let user know what a website is all about.
- How this website will help me or what it offers?: Once again a very important aspect of homepage design missed by lot of websites. A homepage should clearly portray the benefits it offers to its users.
- Latest Updates: New developments, latest products or exciting news is important for both first time and returning visitors.
- Links: Homepage is an entrance point to the website. Navigation should be planned properly to give clear and easy path to visitors so that they could accomplish their task with minimum number of clicks.
What about the amount of content on the homepage?
As mentioned earlier, a user on an average spends 25-35 seconds on homepage. Most of this time is spent on figuring out where to go next. That means a visitor is only going to spend 10-15 seconds for reading. Let us assume that on an average a person can read 5 words per second. This means that one should not have more then 60-100 words of reading material on homepage.
What about the scroll?
75-80% of the visitors are not going to see what lies beyond the first screen on homepage according to usability studies. So beware before making a long home page as it will only be read by 20% of your visitors.
Posted in Design and Usability | 2 Comments »
Latest Updates in Mobile Advertising
Posted on October, 18 at 2:56 pm
SMS GupShup, one of the leading mobile community platforms in India from Webaroo has received $11 million investment from Helion Ventures and Charles River Ventures. SMS GupShup provides free SMS/SMS based group service.
Myxer to offers $5 Million In Advertising completely free. Well, almost: Mobile content based website Myxer is going to launch a program under which it is going to offer $5000 worth of free advertising on its website to 1000 cell phone stores. The catch is that these stores must promote Myxer in their stores.
Gigafone is offering full screen mobile content with each incoming call and SMS. Their solution is integrated with operator mobile handset.
Marketers in India are targeting rural market population in an innovative way. They are pushing voice based advertisements on mobile phones in regional language that could language and literacy barriers which otherwise is not possible via other media.
What is SMS 2.0? SMS 2.0 is an application through which users could send SMS via their mobile phones. Once the message is sent, instead of “Message Sent” screen user would get full screen message with text which will include news and advertisements.
Google SMS Channel: Google is testing waters for its new SMS service in India before going full fledged launch worldwide. It lets mobile user subscribe to blog updates, news alerts, jokes, stocks etc. via SMS messages. Currently there is a limit to 10 messages a day and Google says that service is advertisement free for time being. Well, I feel it will be only free till it is launched worldwide.
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
Vakow.com - Brief Website Review
Posted on October, 18 at 1:18 pm
How I got here:
I got the address of this website from hotteststartups.in. While I am writing this post, vakow.com is ranked 6th on hotteststartups. Impressive!
First Impression:
I had a look at the title of the page. “SMS Blogging & Sharing - Vakow!”. So that means I could signup on this website, have my message posted in my personal blog and share it with other people on mobile in the form of SMS.
The reality:
Ok, just below the head towards right I found the details. This website is about:
- One could start a SMS blog.
- Follow friends blog and subscribe to their posts as alerts.
- One could also send free sms to any phone in India.
Well the features look attractive.
Vakow is SMS related hence I tried opening it on my mobile. I have Nokia N95 with Edge form Airtel. Well, they do not have a wap website. Their home page size is 507kb when I tested. It might not be world record for size but very close to it. After 5 minutes my mobile could download only 411kb and I stopped.
The home page:
The home page is somewhere near to twitter well, not really. First I did not like the color i.e orange, pink and some strange version of blue. Text is of yellow, white black and blue in color. If head is done in blue or some related colors, it would have been great.
Main body where messages are displayed looks fine. Although some work can go into font sizes. Right sidebar again is not pleasing to eye. It is not readable too.
“Web2.0 type designs” Well it does not mean having some big fonts and yellow backgrounds. Everything in a design should be balanced which is missing from Vakow.com.
Let us get down to work.
The work:
Signup form. Everything looks good here. I filled the details and it was quick. I have to enter 6 digit code which they will send to my mobile. I received the sms in 30 seconds. WOW, that was quick.
Everything is working great. I landed on the screen as below.
Lots and lots of yellow backgrounds. Light yellow, semi light yellow and very light yellow. The work area looks fine. They should use ajax here as each tabs loads a new window and takes lot of time.
I tried posting my first text. Everything was smooth and intuitive. One problem - I tried finding my url after message post and it was their in the extreme right bottom. It could be moved a bit up, at least for first time users.
This is my SMS blog page Here.
My verdict:
Design: 2
Page load speed: 2
Contact us link: 3
Different screen resolutions: 3
(Problem in 800/600)
Browsers: 3
Navigation: 3
Work Area: 4
Web2.0 elements: 2
This was bad:
Note: Hire a good UI developer
The Website: Vakow.com
Posted in Website Reviews | 2 Comments »
Mobile advertising - The Potential and the Opportunity
Posted on October, 14 at 2:02 pm
Advertiser wants precisely targeted audience
Mobile advertising is going to move beyond text and content. In fact the real potential of mobile advertising could be seen once rich media is available on it. Media like video and TV is going to provide better user experience in personalized environment hence better impact advertisements. After all mobile phone is very personal and reaching consumers in their personal space is going to be very special. A place where other media has failed to reach.
In present times text messaging is the biggest medium in the mobile advertising space. The other mediums like ads in content (pull advertisement) are picking up but I don’t feel that they are going to come anywhere near to SMS based advertising in near future. By “near future” I meant minimum 4-5 years.
Opportunity:
Profiling audiences: Company who will own biggest database of users and their profiles are going to rule the space. The profile should include but are not limited to:
- Demography
- Spending
- Usage
- Behavioral informations
Some of these information’s are available with operators but privacy is going to stop them from selling these datas. Well, I am not that sure on this. With proper profiling consumers could be targeted precisely thus giving higher ROI to the advertisers.
Spam Filters: Mobile email is going to be bigger then emails meant for PC in near future. The biggest hurdle in mobile email’s success is going to be spam mails. So free email provider with best spam filter will rule mobile email space.
To Be continued…
Posted in Getting into Roots | 2 Comments »
Mobile SMS Advertising in India
Posted on October, 13 at 1:29 pm
Any phone that exists in India is capable of sending and receiving SMS text messages.
According to the latest report published by trai.gov.in, subscriber base for year 2007 and 2008 is as below:
A total of 9.16 million wireless subscribers were added in the month of August 2008 taking the total subscriber figure to 305.24 million. This figure includes wireless subscribers for Gsm, Cdma and WLL phones.
Now have a look at the mobile web user profile as in opera.com latest report:
Male: 97.2%
Female:2.8%
Age groups:
Less then 18 years: 5.6%
18-27: 75%
28-37: 13.8%
38-47: 3.8%
48+ : 1.0%
75% mobile web users fall in the age group of 18-27. This age group is also a big fan of SMS messaging. This group is one of the most attractive demography which is hard to reach via other media. However this elite group could be easily reached via SMS advertising. The most popular types of advertising on mobile phones are “Pull” and “Push” advertising.
Pull Advertising : Advertisements placed in free wireless content.
Push Advertising : Advertising message sent to the user mobile via SMS text messages. These messages vary between 40-160 characters.
Push advertising is far bigger and effective then pull advertising in the current times. Push advertising(smsa advertising) could however cause some legislative concerns. Best way to make push advertising work without meddling with privacy or consumer rights of the users is via “OPT IN” method. Here user agrees to receive advertisement.
This is what websites like 160by2.com and way2sms.com is doing. Out of 160 character limit of SMS, these websites provide the first half i.e. 80 characters to the user absolutely free. The unused character space is utilized for placing ads.
Let us have a look at some of the benefits of SMS advertising:
- Independent of web browser on mobile phones.
- All mobile devices can receive these ads.
- Users accept advertisements
- Ads are relevant, targeted and personalized
- SMS has larger audience then PC
- People do not delete messages before reading it.
- Best for branding products
- Mobile is very personal and people seldom leave them at home. Hence, instant reach ability.
Posted in Getting into Roots | 1 Comment »
Web on Mobile or PC - It is all Same
Posted on October, 12 at 12:48 pm
It is becoming clear with the latest “State of the Mobile Web” report from Opera.com that web on mobile or PC is all same. People are accessing web from their mobile in the same way as they browse web from their PC. Trends from the report of last 5 months show that web usage is converging. People are using same websites regardless of the device.
Iphone, PDAs, Blackberrys and high end mobile phones are coming closer to PCs due to which the limitations on mobile web access are coming down. Day is not far when emails will take on SMS. Let us have a look at top 10 websites in India since last 5 months.
Let us have a look at the shifts :
Top 10 websites in India (April): orkut.com, google.com, in.m.yahoo.com, peperonity.com, gallery.mobile9.com, mocospace.com, 160by2.com, mobango.com, itsmy.com, indianrail.gov.in
May: 8 websites lost their place from top 10 list except Google and Orkut. The websites which gained entry in the top 10 list are all mainstream websites famous with PC users.
June: 3 websites lost their place in the top 10 list. Websites which gained entry are indiatimes.com, myspace.com, mobile9.com. Websites which lost their ranking are information.com, my.opera.com and gmail.com.
July: Top 7 rankings remained same for the month of July. The last 3 rankings were replaced. my.opera.com is back on the list followed by songs.pk and peperonity.com. 3 websites which lost their place are indiatimes.com, myspace.com, mobile9.com.
August: Top 10 list showed little change with gmail.com back in the list. New entry pushed no. 10 peperonity.com out.
In August out of top 10 websites for mobile web, 4 is owned by Google.
Now let us have a look at the top 10 websites according to Opera.com list for mobile and Alexa’s list for PC’s web.
Top 6 websites in Alexa list is their in mobile web list too. That means, people are accessing same sites and services regardless of the device.
Storage capacity and processing power of mobile phones are increasing and the difference between Mobile and PC’s web is decreasing. What do you feel will be future?
Posted in Getting into Roots | 1 Comment »
PPad 2.0 - 2 column widget ready wordpress theme
Posted on October, 4 at 2:02 pm
This is just a redesign of one of my old theme. If you come across any errors, do let me know.
Again in this design I have used minimum of images for faster downloads.
Posted in Free Wordpress Themes, 2 Column WP Themes | No Comments »
