“Companies can and should take advantage of the opportunity to include as many relevant areas of functionality as possible through mobile web apps on their mobile websites. They should, however, make the engagement experience as friction-free as possible. This means optimizing the space where their mobile web apps reside: their mobile websites.”

“A primary strategy companies have adopted for customer acquisition and retention has been to asynchronously push marketing messages to them through the most relevant marketing channels. The channels for pushing this one-way message have included print, TV, direct mail, online and most recently, mobile.

However, with mobile, it’s now possible (and quickly becoming imperative) for companies to use a synchronous approach that, instead of just pushing messages, creates multi-directional engagement capabilities that empower end-users to engage with the core business processes of the company.

UR Mobile works in that space; its platform can benefit any organization that realizes the value of synchronous mobile engagement strategies. UR Mobile makes it possible to reach both internal and external end-users on a deeper level than what has been possible through other channels.

A synchronous strategy encourages end-user engagement by opening up business process channels and bringing them as close as possible to the end-user. Mobile engagement is about as close as you can get to an end-user without putting a chip in their head.“

The most successful retailers and nonprofits will be…[read the rest of the article here].

“This year’s W3 Winners demonstrate the out-of-the box thinking and creative execution that exemplifies what the Web is all about” said Linda Day, the Executive Director of the IAVA.

UR Mobile is proud to announce that Susan G. Komen for the Cure is a 2011 W3 award winner. Leveraging UR Mobile’s platform, Komen has created a mobile website that provides a great branding presence that also provides strong engagement opportunities for its constituents. Check out the winning site here.

With UR Mobile’s easy-to-use system, you can quickly create a landing page that features your product or event. Add photos, video, and even drive social network traffic by dropping in your Facebook and Twitter components. Be creative in your use of QR codes, driving traffic to your new mobile landing page. These landing pages become take-home marketing elements that can be shared, responded to, updated and measured. All for less than the cost of making a color photocopy.

It’s important to take this dynamic into account when creating a mobile Web presence. Failure to do so can have negative affects on business. According to research conducted by Equation Research, 61% of respondents said they would be less likely to visit a Web site on a mobile device again if they were dissatisfied with the experience. Worse, 40% said they would visit a Web site of a company that offered a similar service.

However, many mobile Web sites are still not optimized for mobile visitors. Part of the reason for this is that companies often make the mistake of mentally lumping mobile sites into the same channel as desktop sites. However, the mobile Web is not “the-same-only-smaller.” What users want to accomplish at a desktop is not typically what they want to accomplish on a mobile device.

Desktop users have a larger keyboard and a mouse. They are seated and comfortable, more able and more willing to explore information placed all over the site.

Mobile users share no such comforts. They are trying to accomplish a single task. They are not in an environment in which they have lots of time to maneuver around a site to find information. They are limited to the actions their thumbs can perform with small controllers on small screens. Building with a “come-one-come-all” attitude fails to consider these realities and can pollute the mobile website experience for users.

How Mobile Sites Get Messed Up:

1. …difficult navigation. It does not take long for the user to get exhausted or frustrated when content is too small to see, encouraging them to leave and try something else. Fortunately, companies have multiple options available to them. They can build responsive mobile design experiences for their websites by simply switching out the UX for the appropriate device. Another option is to create a completely different mobile version of the site. They can build their own code or use a hosted SaaS mobile Web Site building platform. Ready-made tools such as these have the site detection capabilities already built-in, automatically redirecting the mobile user to the site build for that device.

2. … complex forms with small controls. Multi-column forms for entering personal information work well on the desktop, but they do not translate well into the mobile world. They are difficult to navigate, and the movement from field to field does not lend itself to easy completion. In this environment users are also unable to see the full context, such as data they have entered or where they are in the process of filling out the form. Fortunately, established mobile frameworks exist to optimize forms for mobile. Most hosted SaaS mobile Web site CMS platforms have these elements built into them, and companies building their own sites should look at development frameworks like Sencha.

3. … heavy doses of [bad] Flash. Beyond the issue of Flash-based video’s incompatibility with iPhone, other Flash interaction points can be a problem. Take for example a rollover. In a touch screen environment, this is extremely difficult to replicate. The eye is focusing so hard on the smaller images that it is very easy to miss the feature altogether. And without a mouse, the user has a tough time duplicating the control and precise movements required to get the rollover or hover right. The same can be said for volume controls and non-intuitive native navigation. Often overlooked is the fact that Flash on mobile devices is also a huge drain on battery power; coincidentally, Steve Jobs was known to avoid Flash for this very reason. Companies can address this problem by ruling out needless Flash splash screens. There is also a plethora of new standards-based frameworks from HTML5, CSS3 and more to add video, movement, interaction and more to your unique mobile experience.

4. … interminable load times. Companies love to create aesthetically pleasing, stock-image-filled Web sites. And sometimes they become convinced that the 154 KB image of a child smelling a flower is crucial to answer the question of “What We Do.” However, a heavy website, rich in multimedia and images simply will not ever load fast enough to meet mobile users expectations. Long load times risk high abandonment rates. Research backs this up. According to Gomez surveys, over 80% of consumers state they would visit websites more often on their mobile device if they downloaded as fast as they do on a regular computer.

However, companies have the option to use technologies that make rendering more efficient—from minimizing image file sizes to minimizing the code footprint.Most SaaS systems [ur mobile] automatically downsize image resolution.

5. … untested sites. It’s possible to build something that looks great on a Windows desktop but that just won’t work on an Android or iPhone. Oversights like these are easily avoidable through testing. Testing has always been a part of Web development but has mostly been about testing across browsers. That concept needs to now be applied across devices. Companies can make use of current emulator technology to duplicate the mobile user experience on their desktop machines. All major mobile operating systems have emulators available to do testing.

6. …un-touch-friendly features and controls. Features that rely heavily on the keyboard and mouse are not necessarily going to match up with touch screen interactions. Think “touch and swipe,” not “point and click.” Remember the last time you tried to tap on that small text link; the one that was next to the other one, and you kept missing? Yep… Sites have traditionally been built to mouse-friendly specs but the finger on a touch screen does not have nearly the same aptitude as a mouse. There are other types of movements and interface actions that do not live on the desktop but can be exploited in the mobile world, from swiping with a finger to sliding content or numbers along a scale.

7. …cluttered web functions. Imagine a site that fits into about 1200 pixels and is cluttered with actions. Now, about 80% of the real estate is lost, while many of the actions are unneeded from a mobile device anyway. It is not about shrinkage or “sizing down;” it is about selecting the right functions and features that fit into the mobile device world and that facilitate an enjoyable user experience. To accomplish this, companies should do whatever it takes to put themselves in their users’ shoes—whether that means talking to focus groups or creating specific teams to research the user experience.

Mobile is its own channel

It’s important to differentiate the mobile Web channel from the Web channel. One way to integrate this into business strategy is by putting mobile first. If you think of mobile as the driver for your enterprise, it will force you to think of it as a whole new channel—and to value it as such. Set up a team, separate from your web marketing team, that focuses solely on mobile. Measure your mobile site’s performance and gather the appropriate analytics to make decisions based on this separate channel.

Think like your end users and create user experiences that accommodate the speed and efficiency that people demand when using their smartphones. There are plenty of opportunities that will open many new doors and help you gain a tangible competitive advantage.

Aaron Sandoval is the Vice President of Creative and User Experience at ur mobile. ur mobile is a mobile acceleration company focused on helping organizations build compelling, attractive and feature-rich web sites optimized for mobile device viewing. For more information please visit: www.urmobile.com.

With QR codes, planning is essential. Since QR codes will be placed in static elements (printed pieces, environmental graphics, etc.), you cannot change them once they are produced. However, by segmenting your messages across multiple categories, you can add a dynamic aspect to all of your messaging.

Start by creating message categories. Then, create a page on your mobile site or a landing page for each one of your categories. Don’t worry: you don’t need to add content yet. Now, simply generate a QR code for each one of your categories, and use them in your marketing efforts that relate to those categories. Remember to assign a URL to the site or landing page template in the CMS before downloading the QR code. If you don’t do this, the QR code will not go to the right page. Finally, create content for each one of these categories, and update them as often as necessary. Your print piece will always have the most up-to-date content, giving it a dynamic aspect not available before.