Posted by Eric Mills on Mon, Aug 10, 2009 @ 09:04 PM
Ok, so you know that more people access the internet from mobile devices than from computers. You also know that more and more people are trying to interact with you from their mobile phone. You may also know that it is time to start redirecting some of those marketing dollars away from traditional media and into mobile. Good for you. Where do you start?
Let's see now, what have you done with mobile so far? Nothing, you say? Ok, not good. What could you do? Well, if you had a lot of time and money you could write a version of your software or website optimized for every mobile phone platform. Let's see now there's iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, and a ton of Symbian devices out there. All with different operating systems, programming languages, and SDKs. No matter the device, you content would look great. Oh and you need something to deliver content to all these phones. Ugh. Ok, now you have spent all your time and money.
I'm here to help you find the sweet spot between nothing and everything. Here it comes. When trying to reach your mobile audience, the best bang for your buck is a native iPhone app and a mobile optimized website. iPhone currently accounts for over 50% of the mobile traffic in the United States, so that one is a no brainer. Let the rest of the platforms fight for the other 50%, and you can hit them all with a mobile optimized website. You still need a content management system that can serve content to both, but that is much more reasonable that trying to be all things to all phones.