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Mobile Badvertising: Peugeot

Terence Eden — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:02:54 +0000

Peugeot’s new mobile advert has a couple of critical flaws – but has just enough innovation to redeem it in my eyes. Read on to find the two basic mistakes they made, how to solve them, and the cool feature you should be incorporating into your adverts.

Clicking on the advert takes you onto a fairly swish looking landing page. There are some clear calls-to-action, and some attractive graphics.

I find the text a little hard to read. Let’s zoom in.

Yikes! The whole site is an image! This is incredibly bad practice for several reasons.

The page weight will be excessive. This means your site will be slow to load and possibly cost your customers more to access it.
Inability to zoom in. With some smartphones like the X10mini having tiny screen, you need to consider how your site will look over a wide range of devices.
SEO. Search engines can’t read images. Plain text will ensure your site is spidered.
Reflowing – what happens when the user rotates the screen? Your image won’t scale and reflow as well as text.
Updating. If you need to update the site, you’ll have to edit a series of images – one for each screen size. With text, one change and you’re done.

In Praise of…

The usual “Find A Dealer” service asks the user to type in their postcode or some other location based detail. I’m very pleased to say that Peugeot goes one step beyond this. They take advantage of the geo-location api of the phone so that the user doesn’t have to do any extra work. Brilliant.

This is a great use of the technology. Let computers do what they do best and reduce the need of your user to type data in.
You can use a cross-platform geo-location solution like Google Gears to detect your users’ location.

Ideally, the domain name should be that of the product. The user probably doesn’t know who “sevenal-fit.com” are – but they would recognise “peugeot.com”.

Text Effects

This is the final fly in the ointment.
Is this piece of text a link? How about this one? What about this?

By convention – and good usability practice – links are styled differently than regular text. Usually by underlining or displaying in a different colour. It helps the user see what actions they can take on a page. Have a look at this results page and see if you can tell what you can click on.

Not very intuitive – is it? It looks like a list of results with no further information.

As it happens, you can click on the dealer names.

Again, there’s no text decoration. While it’s good that they’ve used click-to-call for the phone numbers, there’s no indication until you’ve placed your finger or cursor over the text that it’s a link.

Don’t make your users think. Clearly signpost the actions which are available to them.

It’s also worth including a map of the area – or even directions from the user’s current location. Remember, the end goal of this advert is to make someone buy a car. Make it as easy as possible for your users to go from advert to purchase.

Conclusion

Text is better than images.

Remember to decorate your text correctly.

Geo-location is awesome – but don’t forget to display a map.

Finally, consider which domain name the users will see and if they will trust it to store their data securely.

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Mobile Badvertising: Nokia Music

Terence Eden — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:52:50 +0000

I’ve mentioned Nokia on here a few times. For a mobile focused company, they seem to have a real problem with mobile advertising.

It starts well enough with an animated GIF.

The site it links to is http://music.nokia.co.uk/ – cleverly, Nokia redirect mobile users to a specific mobile version of the site. That’s where it all starts to go wrong…

Viewport Is Your Friend

This is what the user sees on visiting the advert. Better hope they’ve got great eyesight!

This is caused by having an obnoxiously wide graphic at the top – but also by not setting the viewport correctly.

In the section of your HTML, you can define how wide the page should display. You can set the width of the page to automatically be that of the phone with this single line of code.

This will ensure your readers don’t have to manually zoom in to read the marketing message you’re trying to impart.

You can find more information about Viewport on Learn The Mobile Web.

Don’t Link To Non-Mobile Sites

On this mobile website – where do you think the links lead?

Not only do they point to large pages totally unsuitable for mobile – one of the sites requires Flash to work. Thereby further excluding millions of potential customers.

It’s one of the first rules of mobile advertising – don’t force your customers to download megabytes of unusable data.

What Are You Trying To Do?

Finally, what’s the point of this advertising campaign?

The main purpose seems to be to get me to download content on to my PC. An odd proposition for a mobile site, surely?

Given that it can’t be used by anyone without a Nokia phone – why is it being served to me?

If it is trying to entice me to buy a Nokia device so I can experience “Comes With Music” – why is it doing its best to treat me like a second class citizen?

Ask yourself this question – what are Nokia trying to acheive with this advert. Nokia’s effort doesn’t seem to offer any value or information for anyone. What a waste of time and money.

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Mobile Badvertising: Floors-2-Go Have Crappy SMS Spam

Terence Eden — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:43:02 +0000

UPDATED 07 September 2010

How to unsubscribe

If you want to unsubscribe from this SMS spam, you have three options.

Ring “Dill” on 0121 359 0234 – she works for Floors2Go and will be happy to remove you from the list.
Floors2Go purchased your phone number from tmnmedia – who assured Floors2Go that you were desperately interested in getting SMS spam. Call them on 020 7936 6600. Or call Matt Love 020 7936 6520 – you can also email him on matt.love@tmnmedia.com – Matt was responsible for the SMS “campaign” and is happy for you to email him if you want your number removed.
But that’s not all! tmnmedia purchased your number from Scientia Data Call them on 0207 940 9797.

At the moment, I’ve got “Tess” from Scientia looking in to where they got my number from. Remember – if you ring each of them, they’ll soon see the value of SMS spam…

Hope that helps.

Original Article

If there’s one thing I hate more than SMS spam – it’s crap SMS spam.

Let’s count the errors in this atrocious attempt at mobile marketing.

Where is my nearest Floors-2-Go store?
What number should I call to find the nearest store?
WHY THE random capitalisation of SOME words?
Grammatical and spelling errors (“UKS” should be “UK’s”. “upto” should be “up to”)
No return number – I can’t opt-out nor text them for more information.
No mobile website.
IT’S SPAM! HORRIBLE NASTY EVIL SPAM. The mobile is the only battery powered toy I caress against my face and take to bed with me. It’s personal and intimate. If I haven’t given you permission to invade my personal space – I’m not going to be best pleased with you.

Look – don’t spam people. But if you are going to – at least put some effort. This is a pathetic attempt at engaging the customer.

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Mobile Badvertising: Samsung Galaxy S

Terence Eden — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:22:13 +0000

In this Mobile Badvertising series, I regularly pick on the Guardian. I don’t have anything against them – they’re my favourite mobile news resource. It’s such a shame that the advertising they have on the site is atrocious.

Samsung Galaxy S

The Galaxy S is Samsung’s latest Android handset. There are so many Android phones out there that you need a really great advertising campaign (or a really great product) to stand out from the competition.

Let’s take a look at the Samsung campaign.

Small Isn’t Beautiful

Advert for GalaxyS on Guardian Mobile site

The advert is disproportionately small compared to the rest of the site. The Android phone I’m viewing on has a screen width of 480 pixels – the advert looks tiny and pathetic.

At first I thought it was the Guardian mangling the advert – but a look at the URL shows that 4th Screen have decided to serve up a 168*28 image.

Tiny Banner Ad

Worse than that, they’ve blindly resized the image rather than rework it. Take a look zoomed in – the text is illegible.

Tiny Banner Ad

The Micro-Site

The site behind the advert isn’t too bad. But there’s nothing exciting about it. Just a series of static pages. You can visit it at http://galaxys.co.uk/

What Do You Want Your Customers To Do?

With every mobile advertising campaign, you need to think about what it is you want to accomplish. This campaign is, presumably, designed to encourage people to buy the Samsung Galaxy S phone. So, it would make sense if people could buy the phone from the site. No?

Try to buy the phone from this page

There are three glaring mistakes on this page. Can you spot them?

No mention of price. Is this pre-pay or contract? Is this a premium product or a cheap and cheerful device?
No click-to-call. Those phone numbers should be clickable and should take the customer straight through to the dedicated Galaxy S representatives.
Those images of the phone company logos are clickable – yet there’s nothing to suggest they are.

Still, clicking on those logos will let me buy the phone through a mobile-friendly shop. Right?

Mobile Companies Who Don’t Do Mobile

eTailing is hard. Getting a web based shop up, running and profitable is tricky. Getting a mobile version of that site can be even harder. But if there were ever a company to do it well, you would expect them to be a mobile company. Sadly, that’s not the case.

Vodafone's non-mobile website

Virgin's non-mobile site

So, our hapless user can’t use her phone to make a call to buy the handset, she can’t use the web browser to buy the handset. Is she supposed to wander down to her local store to buy one? Way to make use of the mobile medium…

How To Fix It

All is not lost. There are several easy steps which can be taken to fix this disaster.

Serve up adverts which are correctly sized for the screen requesting them.
Don’t resize adverts – create a unique advert for each screen size you’re targeting.
Make you micro-site interesting. Add mobile YouTube videos. Add wallpapers, ringtones, or competitions. Give people a reason to visit the site and share it with their friends.
Click To Call. I don’t know how often I have to say this, but if your potential customers can’t place an order from your site – you will never convert them into a paying customer.
Let the user know which parts of your site are clickable.
Never redirect a user to a non-mobile website. The user may have to pay the data charges and will get a site which they can’t use.
Mobile e-tailing. Three huge names in mobile – yet I can’t order this phone from my mobile. That’s just embarrassing. Either make a mobile friendly site, or give customers directions to their nearest store.

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Mobile Badvertising – Guardian, Barclay’s, Apple Redux

Terence Eden — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:29:35 +0000

Once again my wrath is targeted at The Guardian, Barclays and Apple. Three massive companies – each one of whom could have stopped this advertising disaster.

Mistake #1

Take a look at this rather charming advert on the Guardian’s mobile site. The more astute among you will recognise the problem.

I’m being advertised an iPhone game when I’m browsing the site using an Android phone. This is the fault of the Guardian – or, more likely, whoever runs their advertising department.

Well, let’s click on it.

Mistake #2

The image expansion doesn’t work. This is probably because it uses iPhone specific code.

Mistake #3

Let’s take a look at the raw image.

The image is a 135KB PNG. That’s massive. At a time when unlimited downloads are under threat, it is incumbent on the mobile web designer to minimise needless data usage.

If we convert the image to a JPG, the size goes down to 26KB. Can you spot the difference in quality?

Mistake #4

What happens if we visit the destination?

Ah. Apple send us to the desktop version of iTunes. This is better than what used to happen, where they tried to install iTunes!

Preventing The Problem

Every browser sends a User-Agent String. The advertising server should be configured to only send iPhone-specific adverts to iPhones.

It really is that simple. You can use services like WURFL and DeviceAtlas to automate this process if you like.

What Should Have Happened

The advert shouldn’t have been shown in the first place. The Guardian needs to ensure that the advertising space it is selling is being correctly targeted.
The click should have gone directly to Barclays – if they saw the phone viewing the content wasn’t an iPhone they should display alternate content.
Apple needs to have a mobile friendly page. It really is that simple. A great mobile friendly page with a link that says “Want to play this games? Find your nearest Apple Store here“.

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Orange Mobile Badvertising

Terence Eden — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:04:44 +0000

It has been a while since I last posted in the Mobile Badvertising section. Mobile adverts are slowly improving. By every once in a while, I spot an advert of such mind numbing ineptitude that I am compelled to post.

Orange

Take a look at the latest offering from Orange – a large UK mobile network operator.

Orange Advert on Guardian

Spot it? It’s the microscopic banner hidden away on the mobile site of the Guardian newspaper.

The advertiser has little choice in the poor placement. And it’s not their fault if the Guardian has resized it. Let’s take a look at the full size animated GIF.

Orange Advert

Ah.

Still, I’m sure the rewards for the eager-eyed viewer are magnificent….

Orange Badvert - click to embiggen

Not so much.

The potential customer is presented with a poorly resized image. The only link at the bottom takes them to a seemingly identical page.

Orange Badvert 2 - Click to embiggen

What Else Does It Do?

So, let’s look at the purchase experience.

Oh, there isn’t one. No nearest store finder. No mobile YouTube video showing off the phones. No click to call so you can buy one right now.

Nothing.

To recap, a tiny banner takes you to a poster. That’s it. No though has been given to the unique opportunities that mobile affords. There’s no way to convert an interested browser into a paying customer. If we’re being honest, there’s not really enough information in this microsite to justify an advert.

It is small, feeble and pointless.

Lessons To Learn

Ensure that your advertising assets are available n a variety of screen sizes. Small adverts are hard to click on. Worse still, they may be completely ignored.

If you can’t resize your images, unplug your computer and go home.

Think about what you want to achieve from the advert.
Are you trying to increase sales? Give the potential customer a direct route to purchase from you.
Are you trying to excite or interest potential customers? Provide enough interesting information. This isn’t print. You’re not limited by page size – only by your imagination.

Take advantage of the medium. Mobile is so much more useful than print. Orange seem stuck in the mindset that a single image is all an advert needs to be.

Message To Orange

You’re a mobile company. Make your adverts reflect that. You should be promoting excellence – not mediocrity.

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Mobile Badvertising – Intercontinental (and the BBC)

Terence Eden — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:31:16 +0000

If you’re outside of the UK, you will see adverts on the BBC site. This also happens on the mobile site.

Here’s a typical example.

BBC Advert

Intercontinental are a premium brand. No doubt their mobile advertising is really good. Right?

First Impression

Intercontinental Advert Page 1

We start off with a mobile friendly page. Almost. There are five flaws here.

Large image. While visually appealing, consider that not everyone has a fast mobile Internet connection. They may also have to pay per KB. Is there a way to use multiple, smaller images to make things just as appealing as well as being quick and cheap?
Exposing a hyperlink. It’s rarely a good idea to show the http:// and other inner workings of your systems. It breaks the understood convention of the web and exposes your URL structure. In this case it also shows that the website you’re sending people to neither belongs to Intercontinental nor the BBC.
Hyperlink colouring. Convention is that links are in blue – or at the very least a different colour from the rest of the text – and underlined. This allows customers to quickly and easily see where the clickable parts of the site are.
This is a mobile advert – where is the mobile mindset? Why am I signing up for an email newsletter? Why not a monthly SMS or MMS? Why not a mobile video showing how wonderful the Intercontinental is? Why not a mobile voucher to present at my next visit? What a missed opportunity.
Bearing numbers 2 and 3 in mind, is “The Real” clickable? If so, where does it lead? A consistent style helps with navigation. Clearly explaining what lies behind a link encourages clickthrough.

Speaking of clickthrough – let’s go and sign up for this e-newsletter.

Disaster!

Regular readers of this blog know what’s coming next.

Not exactly mobile friendly

Yup. It’s a desktop web page which is totally unsuitable for mobiles. Poorly formatted, hard to use and generally a disaster. How much did they spend on mobile advertising? Could they not have spared a few € for a mobile friendly sign up page?

Back a Step

Let’s go back to that first page and click on “The Real”. Maybe it’s the real link to the mobile sign up form?

The Real

Ah! Now we see why InterContinental were advertising on the BBC – they have a tie in show. The link right at the bottom goes back to the first page, what about www.bbc.com/thereal ?

Notice that, yet again, we have a different style of URL. It isn’t underlined, it isn’t a different colour, but it is clickable. This is the third style of URL on this site – totally confusing.

Let’s click (you all know where this is going, right?)

Calamity!

Non-Mobile BBC Site

To be sure, this is a lovely site – but it’s not exactly what you’d call mobile friendly. What is the point of putting a link to a slow to download, expensive and poorly rendered desktop page within a mobile advert?

It doesn’t have to be this way!

The BBC excels at producing mobile tie in content. Take a look at the mobile friendly Doctor Who page.

Doctor Who Mobile

Mobile formatted, downloads, videos, loads of interesting and engaging content. Just the way it should be.

Conclusions

There is one important lesson to be learned here.

Make sure all of your site is mobile friendly. That doesn’t just mean all pages are suitable for mobiles – it also means that the offer is suitable for mobile.

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Mobile Badvertising – Guardian & STA

Terence Eden — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:46:44 +0000

We all know and love the humble banner advert. That little rectangle of joy which seeks to distract our attention. It’s a ubiquitous format on the web.

It’s a format that, for better or worse, has migrated to mobile.

Here’s the mobile Guardian showing off its latest advert for STA travel.

A Normal Banner Ad? Or Much, Much More?

This being a super-whizzy smartphone, the advert has a surprise up its sleeve. Clicking on it doesn’t take you away from the current page – it displays an overlay instead.

Banner Overlay

Brilliant!

This is a fantastic idea!

You don’t leave the referring site – that means you don’t have to navigate away from a site you’re interested in.
It’s visually exciting. The advert doesn’t contain distracting animation, but it does animate as it unfolds down the site.
Click-To-Call. There’s a great big stonking call to action “CALL US NOW”. Clicking that will make your phone dial STA’s call centre.

So why is it in the Badvertising section?

Let’s Click To Call….

Callto?

Ah.

Clicking to call doesn’t work. It’s unlikely to work on any mobile phone.

Callto – as far as I can tell – is an unofficial URI scheme supported only by Skype.

There are two common ways to initiate a click-to-call

tel:

According to DeviceAtlas over 2,300 phones support the tel: schema

wtai:

The oldest – and most common – way of dialling from the browser. The WAP Forum specification was laid down in the late 1990s. The syntax is slightly strange – wtai://wp/mc/ – but it works on many phones.

International

The other problem is that you have no way of knowing where in the world a user’s phone is. You need to specify the international dialling code. For the UK that’s +44.

Why? If the user is roaming and tries to dial 08…. at best they will be unable to connect to your number. At worst they’ll connect to a local number who won’t be best pleased to have a bumbling English-person ringing them.

How To Fix It

Using a service like WURFL or DeviceAtlas will allow you to see whether to use tel:, wtai:, callto, or something else.

Use the international dialling code. You can’t assume your customers are based in your country.

Use a geographical number. Premium rate numbers like 0871 don’t come out of your customers’ bundles. They can cost much more from a mobile than from a land line. Make sure the number you choose is suitable.

Test, test and test again. I can’t believe that this mistake cropped up. Callto: is such a poorly supported URI scheme, that testing on more than a handful of devices would have shown it was unsuitable.

Remember – and it pains me to point out the obvious – if your customers can’t contact you; they won’t contact you!

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Mobile Badvertising: Capgemini

Terence Eden — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:54:07 +0000

If you’re the sort of person who reads the Financial Times, you probably already have a good idea of who Capgemini are and what they do. That’s just as well because their advert is almost illegible. Take a look.

Capgemini Advert in the FT

Lest you think I’ve been monkeying around with screensizes, let me assure you that the image above is at exactly the same resolution that it appeared on my BlackBerry Bold. One of the most popular business devices.

Let’s take a look at the advert by itself.

Capgemini Advert

Despite the whole image being 300 pixels wide, the consultants at Capgemini have opted to use a mere 120 pixels to get their message across to the readers of the FT.

Even if your eyesight hadn’t become strained from staring at pink paper for the last 30 years, you’d find it hard to make out what the advert is saying. Let’s zoom in on those sparse 120 pixels

Zoomed In

The original image is so small, that when enlarged, it becomes obvious that the famous moto “Consulting. Technology. Outsourcing” was little more than a blur.

So, what is this advert for? The banner image shows nothing more than the logo – and poorly at that. Why would anyone click? Let’s see what happens when we do.

Oh Dear

Capgemini Home Page

Once again a mobile advert on a mobile site has taken us to a page which is definitely not mobile-friendly. The page is http://www.capgemini.com/supply-chain-management/

To compound the error, what do we spot in the lower right corner?

Flash! Argh!

The number of phones which support Adobe’s Flash Player within the browser is minuscule. The BlackBerry is not among their number. Nor is the sainted iPhone.

Luckily the HTC Hero, running Google’s Android, does play flash files. Shall we take a look at what’s on offer?

Capgemini website on Android

It’s a video. A not-at-all-boring video about supply chain management. The video is probably very interesting to those people who read the FT and visit Capgemini’s website. You can download the video directly (warning – 15MB .flv file) or watch it here.

Conclusions

I would hope all of these points are obvious to you.

Make your advert legible.
Make full use of the medium. If you’ve been given a 300×50 pixel banner – fill it.
Give an indication of what your advert points to. Much like Cool URIs – you need something for a human to latch on to.
Point to a mobile site.
If the browser can’t support certain content, make sure you have an alternative available.
Video is a great medium for advertising. Making mobile-friendly video isn’t hard. You can use services like http://m.youtube.com/ to automatically make your video suitable for mobile if you don’t have the skill to do it yourself.
Ask yourself – “What is the point of this advert?” Why would someone click on it? What benefit will the customer get? What benefit will the advertiser get? If you can’t answer these questions, you’ve got a Badvertisement

That a €multi-billion firm like Capgemini can get it so wrong is very depressing. All that talent, money and effort squandered on an advert which shows them in a very poor light. Perhaps the FT should consider screening the adverts it places on its mobile site so as not to infuriate its readers.

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Mobile Badvertising – Nokia E72

Terence Eden — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:56:06 +0000

Ahhh…. Nokia. Remember them? Once upon a time they were a global power-house. But now, with BlackBerry, iPhone and Android nipping at their heels, they are a shadow of their former self. I mean, Nokia “only” have a market share of 38% – and they “only” sold 108 million devices in the last quarter…. Hmmm…. Still – you know what will kick the arses of those American and Canadian rivals?

A Kick Arse Advertising Campaign!

That’s pretty strong stuff. For those of you with poor eyesight, let’s zoom in on the significant detail

Oh no they didn’t!

In the UK, I’m unused to seeing adverts which directly mention their competitors – let alone attack them. But in other parts of the world it’s quite common. Personally, this sort of advert amuses me – but I do wonder how many people will find it childish and unbecoming of a global business. To say nothing of the fact that by mentioning your rival, you’re giving them free publicity.

So, with a humdinger of an advert – this is bound to lead on to an awesome site. Probably with downloadable video showing how cool the handset is, maybe some lush product shots, at the very least the basic stats on these E72 bad boys. Right?

Wrong

Advert Destination

Oh. Is that it? It’s just dumped me on the “Business Phones” page. A page which doesn’t even work well on a mobile browser. Hey, Nokia, I know the BlackBerry’s browser isn’t the best in the world – but there’s no need to rub it in!
On top of that – there’s no link to the E72. If I can be bothered to search for it, this is what I get.

Desktop E72 Page

Again, a non-mobile-friendly page which doesn’t seem to say much.

It Doesn’t Need To Be This Way

With a bit of judicious searching, I finally found my way to Nokia’s mobile formatted E72 product page.

E72 Page

This is the page that the advert should have linked to. Yes, it’s a bit dull. No, you can’t buy the phone directly from here. But at least it goes directly to the product and focuses on its features.

It Really Doesn’t Need To Be This Way

As good as that page is, there are some obvious failing. No product shots, no comparison with BlackBerry (the main thrust of the original advert), no links to buy the product.

The daft thing is, Nokia has some wonderfully designed mobile-friendly product pages.

Nokia's 5800 Page

They even – get this – have phone numbers so you can order one of their products. It’s hardly a revolutionary idea – let your customers give you money – but it’s totally absent from the first advert.

Call Me

There are a whole mish-mash of different visual styles on offer.

N900 Page

It’s probably enough to give Nokia’s branding team a coronary – but there’s no denying that these pages are visually interesting, and offer much more information in a much more engaging way than the E72 page.

N97 Page

Conclusion

Where to start…?

Make sure your MOBILE advert links through to a MOBILE FRIENDLY page.
If you’re a mobile phone company – this is doubly true.
Follow up on your advert’s promise. If you say “This product is better than Brand X” – show that.
Make a visually appealing site. This WWW medium isn’t paper. You’re not charged extra for printing in colour.
Let your customers buy your product. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Add a phone number or an email address on there if they can’t buy directly with their phone.
Provide as much information about your product as you can. This is your chance to wow your customer. Plain text and small images just won’t cut it. Again, you’re not being charged per printed page – so go nuts. If you can, offer some video content.
Finally, and this is a biggie, link directly to your products page. If I’ve clicked on an advert for a Gizmo XYZ, don’t take me to Gizmo Corp’s front page – take me directly to what I’ve said I want to see.

These are really basic points – yet we see big companies fail to deliver again and again. Mobile advertising is big business, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at this advert.

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Mobile Badvertising – BarCap

Terence Eden — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:15:47 +0000

Ahhhh! The BBC. Shining bastion of purity in a sea of commercial malaise. Nothing can spoil its lustre.

Well, for those of us in the UK. For the poor sods who find themselves living in the wilderness of ROW (Rest Of World) this is their BBC experience…

BBC With Adverts

The reasons for me seeing this are rather complex and involve VPNs and a co-located BES.

Regardless, what’s this advert like? The text is small and indistinct. The purpose of the message is rather vague. There’s no allure. Just a static banner. How very 1996. Well, gentle reader, as you know from previous excursions, I am prepared to click where no ordinary mortal would.

Click

www.BarCap.com

Oh – as the kids say – Em Gee. What is this?

For those of you with poor eyesight, Barclays have pointed me straight at the desktop version of their website. There is no mobile friendly site in view. Not even a link to say “On a mobile? Click here.”

To compound the error – the site is JavaScript heavy. Too heavy for the BlackBerry I use to view the site. You remember BlackBerry? The incredibly popular handset that every successful business-person carries. You know, the target demographic.

What To Do

Make your advert interesting.
Make your site mobile friendly – or at least suitable for your target demographic’s handset

Is it really that hard?

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Microsoft’s New Marketing Campaign

Terence Eden — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:07:44 +0000

I wander around the world in a perpetual state of confusion. Why is the world the way it is? Why do people make bad decisions? Why – when there are so many better alternatives – do people choose the worst of all possible worlds?

Rather than getting bogged down in philosophy, I refer to the reason people choose Microsoft Windows to do anything public facing.

Advertisers obviously care enough about their message to craft 30 second videos, they invest millions on infrastructure to support showing them. Then they take a totally unsuitable and unstable method for playing them back – why?

It’s a phenomena I repeatedly see. Advertising screens around the world which are really only displaying one message.

They’re saying “Windows – The Worst Way To Get Your Message Across”.

However, it’s not just Windows which has the problem – each of these three photos show a PC which has failed to POST correctly. So they are stuck – forever displaying their inadequacies to thousands of passers-by. (Click to embiggen)

My real rant isn’t about Windows – it’s about the design and thinking behind such advertising screens. It would appear that each screen is driven by its own PC. What madness! The cost of hardware – let alone software – must be phenomenal.

At the moment, each screen displays exactly the same content as its neighbour. There’s no reason why a single computer couldn’t be used to drive all the screens.

I say exactly the same – the screens get progressively out of sync as the day goes on. Presumably the separate PCs don’t communicate with one and other.

The next thing that bothers me is the use of Windows.

These screens aren’t using an embedded version of Windows – they’re using XP. Now, XP is a fine OS – but it is bloated in terms of what is needed. All that is needed is a small embedded device which can be loaded with video files and set to play back.

It doesn’t need a desktop OS. It doesn’t need anything more complicated than a display, video codecs and an Ethernet port. This is the sort of thing for which Linux is perfect.

So, why? Why has this system been allowed to develop? Every day I see another screen which is broken, out of sync, or crashed. Why has such a fragile and expensive solution become so prevalent?

The majority of these photos show TFL advertising screens managed by CBS Outdoor. I really do wonder if they ever wander through the tube and see what a shoddy experience they are delivering.

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Mobile Badvertising – Flickr & iPhone

Terence Eden — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:30:29 +0000

Once again, I dive into the confusing world of Mobile Internet Advertising. A world, so we’re told, where the streets are paved with gold.

Based on the evidence I’ve accumulated, mobile advertising is subject to a lot of hype and not a lot of professionalism.

Take this example as seen on my BlackBerry 9000.

Flickr iPhone Advert

First off the bat, it gets my phone wrong. It should be using the User Agent to determine which advert to serve.

Well, let’s be a good consumer and click on it any way…

iTunes Web Interface

What the deuce?!

It has taken me to the Desktop version of the iTunes installation page – despite knowing I’m on a mobile!

What Should Have Happened?

My phone requests the advert.
Advertising agency serves up a device specific ad.
I click on the ad.
The ad server sees my User Agent
For iPhone, it should automatically redirect me to the App Store
For BlackBerry / Android / S60 etc, it should automatically redirect me to the native app store
For everything else, it should automatically redirect me to http://m.flickr.com/

How Can It Go So Wrong?!

I’m making the assumption that this is an advert by flickr. It may well be an advert by a third-party who have a (chargeable) app for iPhone.

Even if it is the latter – why are they advertising on BlackBerry? Or, rather, why is their advertising agency wasting their marketing budget by showing an advert on a device which can’t support the content?

Make Sure Your Advert Works

It’s not rocket science. If people can’t get to your product, they won’t spend money with you. They’ll also get a negative impression of your brand.

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Mobile Badvertising – NatWest

Terence Eden — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:13:08 +0000

I feel a bit guilty about including NatWest’s latest mobile advert in my Badvertising section – because it’s mostly very good. But it shows exactly why you need to carefully examine every link within your site and see how useful it is for your customers.

You may have noticed this animate banner as you wander around the mobile web.

NatWest Advert

Here it is in context

NatWest Ad on Times Site

So, what do we see when we click on it?

The Good

NatWest Mobile Site

Now, this is pretty good! An attractive site, seems on brand, gives details of the benefit. What’s this at the bottom? Could it be…?

Click To Call

Click to call is such basic functionality – I’m shocked that more mobile sites don’t make better use of it. It saves the customer from having to scribble down your number or worse, try to remember it. If you’re smart, you will set up a separate number for the mobile site so you can track how effective the site is.

Terms and Conditions

The one thing you learn from looking at your site stats is that no-one reads the terms and conditions. However, it’s the first thing your lawyers will look for. So make it prominent so you can’t get sued later.

While the NatWest T&Cs are fairly mobile friendly – this is where the site starts breaking down.

Terms and Conditions

Linking Out

The first problem is that the two links that are given aren’t mobile friendly.

The first appears to be a pop-up from their Polish site.

Polish Popup

The second is from their main site.

Full Site

PDF

As we go further down the T&Cs page, we see some links to further documents.

PDF

Pop quiz, hotshot, what percentage of mobiles can read PDFs? Some S60 phones can read PDF, as can Android and iPhone. But the majority of phones in the market simply can’t access these documents.

Length

You can read the NatWest Terms and Conditions for yourself. Around eleven thousand words! All on one page.

Conclusions

When designing a mobile site, keep these points in mind.

Don’t link to any non-mobile sites.
If you have to link to non-mobile sites, ensure you give the user a warning so they know not to click if they have a less capable phone.
Make sure that the formats you use on your site can be accessed via mobile. Convert PDFs to HTML if you can.
While you may need to have Terms and Conditions on your site, they should never be more prominent than your main call to action. In this case, the “Call Us Now” button should be shown to the user before the T&Cs.
Consider splitting pages in to “chunks”. Many phones will have a low memory limit and won’t be able to display your pages.
Even if they can display the page, scrolling through hundreds of lines can be a painful experience.

Overall, this is an excellent microsite which is let down by a few silly mistakes.

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Mobile Badvertising – #tweetsgiving

Terence Eden — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:00:04 +0000

America and Canada both celebrate a holiday called “Thanksgiving“. Although, for complex reasons, the celebrate it at different times of the year. Outside of North America the holiday simply doesn’t exist. Much like the US doesn’t celebrate Guy Fawkes night – the British don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

So, I was a little surprised to see this advert for #tweetsgiving on my mobile.

What is tweetsgiving?

For now, let’s ignore the perils of assuming that your country is the entire market place. It’s a common problem which, sadly, is prevalent in the USA. I clicked on the banner like a good consumer – hoping I’d find out what #tweetsgiving was.

Unavailable

I’ve talked before about having your service ready for the floods of people who are going to visit. You only get one chance to make a first impression – this first impression says “We’re broken”. Would you trust this site with your money? With your time? Would you click on the same banner again?

Well, I’m, a fool. I waited a few hours. Teething problems, I reckoned. Later on in the day – when I saw the same banner – I clicked.

Oh Dear

I was greeted by an unfriendly error page.

Third time’s the charm. In my pursuit of finding the worst Mobile Badvertising out there – for you, dear reader – I clicked. Once more unto the breach…

That's It?

So this is what the advertising campaign is for? A block of text. No images. Nothing to convince me that it’s genuine. No details about the charity – if it is a charity – or the projects in Tanzania. And – were I charitably minded enough to pay – no method of payment for those outside the USA.

How To Fix This

Friendly error pages. Things break, that’s a fact of life – but when they do, ensure that they fail gracefully. Make sure that your error pages are still useful to your prospective customers.
If your site is broken – or under severe strain – withdraw the advert until you are sure you can satisfy demand.
If your offer is limited by region – try to ensure that it is never seen outside that region.
Given that the Internet is international – offer alternative ways for foreign customers to pay you.
Make your site attractive. You don’t need to go overboard, but a few images, links to other sites or pages, downloadable content, will attract more customers that plain prose.
If you’re asking for money for a charity – show your potential donors that you are genuine. In this case a link to the charity’s site would have helped. In the UK, all charities have to be registered – I don’t know if the USA does something similar.

While I’m sure that the aims are laudable, this is truly a perfect example of Mobile Badvertising. The site doesn’t work and, when it does, you wish that you hadn’t bothered. What a waste.

Bootnote

There is one good thing about this Badvertising. The link to Quattro Wireless does go to their mobile page and not to some Flash-ridden abomination.

Quattro Wireless's mobile page

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Mobile Badvertising – Click Here

Terence Eden — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:00:47 +0000

How do you indicate that something on the web is “clickable”? The W3C – the body which sets the standards for the Web – recommend you don’t use “Click Here” for link text. Normal text is usually underlined and / or a different colour when it is a hyperlink – images don’t have any specific decoration to indicate you can click on them.

In this animated GIF, an advert for Lexus, we see a call to action which says “Click Here”.

Lexus Advert

Would it not be obvious to readers that this is an advert? That adverts are clickable?

Perhaps not. Let’s see how it is laid out on Reuters Mobile.

Advert on the Reuters Mobile site

Utterly bizarrely, this image isn’t clickable! The user will try in vain to click where it says “Click Here” and get nowhere – they have click on the word Lexus.

Take a look at the source code, if you don’t believe me.

HTML Source Code

Make Your Advert Easy To Access

Seems obvious, no? The bigger the target area, the more chance a user will be able to click on it. This is a big usability issue – especially on phones touchscreens, trackpads and rollerballs.

We see this issue in HTML forms as well. In this example, it’s easy to select the “Male” option simply because the label is clickable.

The “Female” option is harder because you need to have the dexterity to accurately position your cursor over the tiny radio button as opposed to a larger target.

For a chance to win an AMAZING prize – click this dot . It’s not the easiest thing in the world. Especially on a mobile device where the cursor may only move in large steps.

What To Do?

Having a hyperlinked word or phrase under an advert certainly isn’t going to hurt. When it’s the only way to access the content, you risk confusing your users’ mental model about how images work.

Above all, never say “Click Here” if there’s nowhere to click.

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Mobile Badvertising – BlackBerry Characters

Terence Eden — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:00:21 +0000

HTML is a complex beast. Especially when it comes to languages. I don’t mean the difference between English and French but between UTF-8, Windows-1252, and all the other methods for encoding text.

When it goes wrong, you can come a cropper – take a look at this advert for the BlackBerry. Somehow a character has crept in to the text which can’t be rendered by the browser.

BlackBerry? Advert?

Immediately, one gets the sense of a poorly tested advert – one which probably goes to a dodgy site. Right? Wrong! Take a look at the page source – it clearly points to the official BlackBerry site.

HTML Source Code

Test, Test and Test Again

I’ve no idea what character is meant to be represented in that advert. But I know that the error should have been caught in testing.

Test your advert to see if it works.
Test your advert to see if it displays properly.
Test your advert on multiple handsets.
Test your advert in multiple browsers.
Test your advert on devices which use a different language or character set.
Test your advert before and after setting it live.
Test your advert to make sure the ad-network isn’t mangling it.

Like Bronzey or Silvery – But Made of Iron

The handset I used to test this was a BlackBerry. Do you want to see what happens when you click on the link? Do you?

What A Mess

Yes, the site is the BlackBerry Pearl product page. The desktop version. The version that the BlackBerry can’t render properly.

Just in case it’s not obvious, I’ll spell it out for you.

A mobile advert should point to a mobile-friendly site.
If you’re a huge, multi-national company who manufactures mobile phones, make sure your website has a mobile friendly version.
Test your adverts on your product.

These mistakes aren’t acceptable. For a company of RIM’s size, it beggars beleif that this advert was approved without any apparent testing.

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Mobile Badvertising – Language

Terence Eden — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:55:39 +0000

One of the joys of the Internet is that it is international. Anyone, from anywhere, speaking any language can visit any page on the World Wide Web.

This makes life difficult for advertisers. Not only do they have to ensure that what they’re showing is applicable in the viewer’s country, but also that it’s legal and written in the correct language. If they don’t, at best they’ve wasted their inventory, at worst, they’re breaking the law.

Google runs this advert for its BlackBerry software.

Google's Advert (English)

It’s a perfectly fine advert. But, on occasion, I see this…

Google's Advert (French)

Je parlez un petit pois de Francais. Mais mon GCSEs were trop many years ago pour me to remember more than “Je voudrais un croque Monsieur, sil vous plait”.

To compound the error, when I click on the link I get this.

Straight To Download

I’m normally not a fan of interstitials – and a direct download link is usually very welcome. In this case it would have made sense to show an information page which allowed the customer to change to a more appropriate language.

At the very least, Google should use the description field to say exactly what it is I’m downloading. There is only the barest mention that the application is in French. Anyone installing this is going to be faced with a bewildering foreign language in their interface.

Here’s the Google Maps mobile web page – note the option to change language.

Change The Language

One minor nit pick – if you don’t speak English, the words “Change Language” won’t mean anything to you. The icon isn’t particularly helpful either. Perhaps choosing a flag or writing the words in several well spoken languages would prevent this confusion.

Solving The Problem

There are three ways you can tell what language to display.

IP Geo-Location
Header
Referring site

IP Lookup

It is possible to geolocate an IP address. This maps your IP address to your rough location. There are a few problems with this.

Accuracy. At best, it will tell you which major city you’re near. That’s usually good enough, especially when determining language.
ISP location. You may be in Germany, but your ISP (mobile or not) may be allocating you an IP from their home country. If your BlackBerry is connected to a corporate BES, your IP will be where your IT department is based.
Roaming. You’re a Brit, your phone has roamed on to a German network, you’re looking for reviews of restaurants in France. Which country should you count as for the purposes of advertising?

Header

Every browser sends a website detailed information about itself in the HTTP headers. Here’s what my BlackBerry would have sent Google.

What Does Your Browser Say About You?

I’ve circled the accept-language header – it quite clearly says I speak British English. The W3C recommends using this field for language preferences (amongst other uses). When your phone starts up for the first time and asks you to pick a language – it’s not just changing the phone’s UI, it will also modify the browser’s headers so you get content that’s acceptable to you.

If you’re interested, you can check your browser’s HTTP headers.

Problems

You may be on a borrowed phone
You may have set your phone incorrectly
Your phone may express a preference for multiple languages

Referring Site

A simple solution is to use the language of the site the advert is placed on. If I were on a French site – it would make sense to show me an advert in French.

The Real Solution(s)

An advert that your audience can’t read is a waste of everyone’s time and bandwidth.

Use all the available information to determine where a customer is and what language they speak.
If you’re not sure, consider an advert without wording. In the above case “Google + BlackBerry = ♥”.
Don’t force a user into downloading without checking their preferences.
Allow a user to switch languages either before download or within the application.

More Mobile Badvertising

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Mobile Badvertising – Part 3

Terence Eden — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:45:09 +0000

Another in the occasional series looking at mobile advertising gone bad.

Who doesn’t enjoy a good, clean game of scrabble. After a busy day reading The Times, nothing takes the edge off the day like a word puzzle. Wait! What’s this?

Scrabble Banner

So far, so good. A clear, professional banner. It clearly emphasises that – although it’s an advert – it’s endorsed by The Times; so you won’t get scammed.

Three mentions of the word “mobile” might be overdoing it though.

Let’s click…

Standing between me and my game

I’m not a fan of interstitials. There’s a lot of rubbish talked about the three click rule, but sticking needless pages between your customer and your content isn’t a smart idea. Have you ever been to a supermarket which made sure you really wanted to enter its hallowed halls before you started buying milk?

One of the great things about computers is that they can do hard and boring things for us. One task they are particularly suited for doing is looking up data. Never rely on the customer to know whether they’ve got a “Java-capable” phone. You may as well say “Only phones with 16 bogomips or greater”. If something won’t work under certain conditions, don’t show it under those conditions.

Your site should be set up so it doesn’t show inappropriate adverts. If you’re showing that advert to an iPhone user, you’ve wasted their time and you’ve wasted your advertising inventory.

Luckily, my BlackBerry will run Java games, so I click.

Onwards!

What The...?

To borrow a phrase from Ewan Mcleod: “Arse”. After all that, you’re not even going to work.

Just a one off? No. I tried this several times over the week. It failed. Every time.

Now, this isn’t The Times’ fault, oh no.

Oh Jamster...

So this is a compound failure by Jamster, The Times and whoever is their advert manager.

Conclusions

Make sure your advert links to a site that works!
Monitor your site – count the number of error pages it serves. If you see a high volume of 40x errors – fix them.
Test the adverts on your site – pull them if they don’t work. This is especially true if you co-brand them.
Make sure you only show relevant adverts. Not only will showing an iPhone specific advert to a non-iPhone user cause annoyance, it’s a waste of your advertising resources.
Don’t put unnecessary barriers between a customer and the content.
If you have to show a maintenance page – give the user an indication of when you expect things to be working again so they know when to come back.
Put the same amount of effort into your error pages as you do your main pages.

Overall, it wasn’t the advert that was the problem – it was the infrastructure behind it.

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Mobile Badvertising – Part 2

Terence Eden — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:50:54 +0000

It’s been a while since I last wrote about Mobile Badvertising. Although we’re constantly told that mobile advertising is going to be HUGE, you wouldn’t know it from looking at the adverts on mobile sites.

Over this occasional series, I’ll be picking examples from popular UK sites. I’ve tried to avoid naming the sites in question, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.

The Lie
Is that too good to be true?

One of the reasons that advertising is dying is that we’ve become immune to its lies. When we see a price on an advert, we know it’s a lie. Adverts are lies trying to trick us into buying something. A flight may say £1. But we know when we add in taxes, booking fees, credit card surcharges and miscellaneous “extras” it will end up costing us a lot more.

At first glance this is a pretty good advert. It reinforces the idea that it’s a mobile specific advert – you aren’t going to have to try and load a Flash heavy website on your phone. While animation can be annoying, this advert keeps most of the image static and uses the animation to add more information – as well as catching our eye.

Let’s click on it…

Bait and Switch

Bam! Now the price has jumped 90%. An extra £180. Now, that may be VAT and delivery… but I think that’s unlikely.

I won’t show you a screenshot from every bit of this microsite, but suffice to say – it’s not good.

While it’s formatted very well, it tells me nothing about the product, I can’t order or buy it. All I can do is fill in a form to get a “sales rep” call me. There isn’t even a click to call link if I want to buy right now.

What To Do

Don’t lie. Hiding behind VAT, delivery and other charges may initially lure in customers; but you’re always going to be rumbled. Do you want an angry customer at your checkout?
Allow me to buy what you’re selling. Seems obvious, no? The advert entices me with “Get Yours” but doesn’t allow me to “get” anything. £199 may be too much to charge via premium SMS, but I can type my credit card number into my phone. (Mind you, it still bothers me that we can’t buy plane and train tickets like Kenyans)
Put useful information on your site. I’ve clicked because I’m interested. Give me something to either hold my attention or sway my mind. This isn’t print. You’re not paying per word, image or page. You can put as much information on your site as you want.
Make it timely. I want to do something at my convenience – not yours. Click to call would have allowed me to make direct contact with a “sales rep”. Or, I can wait until you call me back during a meeting. By all means have both options – but why would you discourage potential customers from contacting you?
Take advantage of the medium. Again, this is the mobile web. Why isn’t there a link to the YouTube advert showing how great this laptop is? Why can’t I download an MP3 of a review of the product? Why isn’t there a “Send this to a friend” link so I can say to my boss “Hey, we should buy some of these”?
What Else?

In short, if you want to make your mobile advert a success – put some effort into it and take advantage of the format.

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Mobile Badvertising

Terence Eden — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:08:00 +0000

I’ve seen two very different adverts recently which, in my opinion are bad. Very bad. I’d even go so far as to say that they are terrible.

The first is a poster advert seen at my local train station.

A tagline, a shot of the service and a URL.

Let’s break it down.
1) The URL. I initially typed in w4mobile rather than w4mobiles – and got a non-mobile friendly page. It would have been better if they’d bought a few similar sounding domains or set upa mobile friendly .mobi address.

2) The URL. I have to type it in myself! What, is this 2005? Where’s the QR Code? Where’s the mobile shortcode? If you’re going to have an easy to mistype URL – make it easy to get onto the phone.

3) It’s just so dull! Why not have a bigger and more colourful shot of the service? A more descriptive idea of what the service is for?

4) Black text on a red background!

The service itself is nothing special. It’s a list of links to various mobile friendly sites. I was expecting something a bit more dynamic. Some social bookmarking for mobile users. It’s very 1998.

Next up, a mobile advert seen on Vodafone live! (I work for Vodafone, these are my opinions, not theirs).

First off, the good…

Click-to-Call. Great stuff. Too many mobile websites insist you remember their number, exit the browser and manually dial. With this, click and you’re dialling.

The bad….

Again, a fairly dull advert. 1 Image, and a few lines of text. This isn’t a newspaper – you’re not paying per word or per image – why not brighten it up?

What the click-to-call giveth the “this is a chargeable call” taketh away! Why use a premium rate number that isn’t included in anyone’s bundle when you could use a geographic number that would be free for all your customers to call?

Finally, take a look at that advert again. What do Avis do? What exactly can I rent for £10 a day?

Mobile Advertising is big business. You wouldn’t know it to look at these two adverts.

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