website works poorly on mobile browsers

nchip  2008/01/03 10:49 UTC


Dear widsets marketing...

If you make a advertisement campaign on public transports (as seems to be on finnish busses), with a nice url about a new cool mobile phone service (www.widsets.com), how is it possible that the url advertized sucks on mobile browsers??

The current page chokes the browser on 6120 (It downloads 700KB of data!) and doesn't work on the S40 browser at all... The page is hard to navigate even with 6120 browser, so it's unlikely that anyone would be able register and download the widsets application during the time of the bus trip...

Re: website works poorly on mobile browsers

Tana  2008/01/07 19:40 UTC


Hi nchip,

thanks for your feedback what come to the current marketing campaign.

Yes, we are having ads around the public transport and they have the www.widsets.com url available. There should be also ads where's the download instruction, and info to use the get.widsets.com url to download the application. Unfortunately you didn't see that one, and very likely you're not the only one.

www.widsets.com is not customised for mobile usage and all the mobile phones may not run it. This is something that we need to take into account more careful in the future, when planning new campaigns.


Taina

Re: website works poorly on mobile browsers

jks  2008/01/26 20:17 UTC

Tana wrote: Yes, we are having ads around the public transport and they have the www.widsets.com url available. [/quote] The real problem is they don't always make a 3.5G connection available near the ad. I saw it at the Rautatientori subway station, and figured I'd check it out while waiting for the train... but it arrived faster than the page. Can you believe Sonera offer only EDGE at the central subway station in Helsinki? [quote=Tana] www.widsets.com is not customised for mobile usage and all the mobile phones may not run it. This is something that we need to take into account more careful in the future, when planning new campaigns.

No, it is something you should take into account right now. I for one had never heard about Widsets before seeing the ad, and I think in that respect I am typical of your target audience. You have this one chance to make the first impression, and the impression you probably told your ad agency you want to give is that you are a hip new Web 2.0 company that does exciting things, that you are the missing link between my mobile phone and all the web content that is so annoying to view on the usual mobile browsers and the usual miniature screens - that you "get it", and downloading your application makes the mobile Web work. You brandish your Nokia affiliation on the ad but make it look like you are an offshoot startup, which probably gets you more than halfway in sending this message.

Then you blow it. You have a home page that is over 220 kilobytes long, not counting the images and the gratuitous Flash animation. You don't have a download link anywhere visible. Your login link leads to a page with the options "I am already registered" and "I have Widsets on my phone but have not yet registered". If by chance somebody does explore your site for a few minutes, your web design and content makes you look like a huge corporation where some executive has just heard of blogs and asked the marketing department to put one in, and all they could think of was Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, and of course their latest oh so fun marketing event, and another executive said you should feature the WSJ app more prominently, and another came up with the "Explore" interface which was duly added, but not everyone in the web team believed in it so they left the "Library" link there too, and legal copy-pasted together all their favorite YOU AGREE TO INDEMNIFY and WE SHALL NOT BE LI-ABLE (does the hyphen constitute a pun I am not getting?) clauses for the Terms of Service, and added Binding Arbitration in the Helsinki Chamber of Commerce for a laugh, but their spell checker didn't catch "if your are located" or the superfluous hyphens. Sad, really.

For the sake of your investors if nothing else, talk to Nokia and ask them to lend you for a week or two some pimple-faced long-haired Macbook-toting web developer who "gets it", and listen to what he has to say. Because, honestly, it is not all that difficult, but as things stand, the excited buzz your overpaid ad agency promised you sounds more like a snigger.

Re: website works poorly on mobile browsers

Tana  2008/01/29 14:53 UTC


Thanks, jks, for your versatile and valuable feedback. I'm sure we'll do our best to improve the service and take you comments into account.

Taina

Re: website works poorly on mobile browsers

WebSeed  2008/01/29 16:02 UTC


jks, whilst I agree with some of the points you make, I think you started to enter into a bit of an unqualified rant. It certainly would be sensible to do some kind of re-direct for mobile users visiting the main page and I'm sure this catches out quite a number of users (including myself the first time I tried to get access to WidSets).

However, with regards to:

jks wrote: For the sake of your investors if nothing else, talk to Nokia and ask them to lend you for a week or two some pimple-faced long-haired Macbook-toting web developer who "gets it", and listen to what he has to say.

... sounds like the last person they should consult.