“After last night’s informative Heavy Chef Session with the inimitable Tim Bishop,
the founder of Prezence Digital, we asked him a few pointed questions on his
thoughts and observations about building mobile sites in South Africa”
You disagreed quite intensely with Jason’s sentiments on “Less Is More” in his
post yesterday with regards to mobisites. Can you explain your view?
“Less is more” is very much a design phrase and in most cases is absolutely true,
however, this phrase cannot be used for ‘functionality’. Less functionality is
definitely not more in your car, on your PC or on your website and is certainly not
true on mobile websites. There is a huge misunderstanding in the fact that mobile
sites have to be the poor cousins of their ‘web’ counterparts, but this misnomer is
spawned by ignorance in the market place (including poor info being disseminated
by trusted and so-called industry experts who claim to be mobile specialists) and
the inability of ‘mobile’ agencies to deliver a well balanced technical experience on
smaller devices.
Mobi is massively powerful. In some cases, more powerful that its web counterpart.
Users should have the choice to use as much functionality as they like. It is our job
to give them that choice in an user-friendly way which is accessible for any kind of
device.
You speak a lot about the lack of progression in South African mobile
development. What do you think SA brands need to do to catch up to their
cousins abroad?
I am not worried about the lack of progression of SA mobile development as I
believe that some of us are on the forefront of technology and amongst the leaders
in the world. These advancements, however, sit with a handful of companies
in SA with limited direct brand exposure. The rest of the agencies who have
the working relationships with the brands have simply added ‘Mobile’ to their
list of services thinking that it is just a matter of scaling down the client’s web
and campaign components. This process is called miniaturizing as opposed to
properly ‘mobilizing’. It undermines the true value and ROI of mobile deployments.
Brand owners ,of course, trust everything their agencies are telling them which
immediately limits that brand to the mobile capabilities of their agency which at
best is usually basic and naive. If brands want be at the forefront of mobile and
enable extended reach to their customers (or potential new customers) it’s simply a
matter of talking to the right people, researching and using the great examples out
there as well as attending conferences or making sure that their agency does!
Mobile in SA is pretty much where we were in web when Prezence started in 2002,
very few are good at it, very few understand it, but many charging a fortune for it.
Transactional functionality is not something you see often in SA mobisites.
Why do you think this is?
Mainly due to the points I raise above. It is not just internal technical limitation or
lack of knowledge of those companies advising the brands. User experience design
is infinitely more important on small devices and this has to be tightly woven into
strong technical function. This combination is rare in SA right now.
Transactional sites on smaller devices need a slightly different approach in
user flow. Creating easy to use, secure transactional sites is somewhat of a
craft that involves many aspects including technical ability, usability and a solid
understanding of how all 6000+ possible devices will handle things.
Remember that mobilizing is not just about enabling the people who use your
website to gain access to you when on the move, it is also about reaching a further
10m+ audience who do not have that privilege of desktop internet access. On a
transactional front for accessing those people comes with its own set of problems.
Alternative payment methods are very close to being realized, so start the work now
and the customers will come.
The Kulula example is a good one, it really offers no useful functionality whatsoever
from a brand that is purely a transactional one (Very similar to SAA). At the moment
on this site I can see how much I am going to miss my flight by, I can check the
weather in where I should have been flying to if I had made my flight, and I can
read all about how I could book a flight, a car, and change my booking if I wasn’t on
my mobile! The simplest things are not even taken care of…. for example on their
contact page. In mobile we have the oldest technology called ‘Click to call’ which acts
like a hyperlink. This enables a phone number to simply be clicked and your phone
will call it. On the Kulula site they don’t even do this, so you will need fetch a pen
and paper (as you won’t be able to type it into your phone because you are browsing
on it), squint to read the number, write it down, and then close down the mobi site
and dial in the number and phone them! I don’t know who did this site and don’t
particularly care, but no doubt good money was paid for it and it can only have been
implemented by a company who does not even understand these basics of mobile
access which is not really going to get us as mobile champions, Kulula or the Kulula
user anywhere.
Apologies, if this very poor user experience was Kulula saying to the agency.. “No
guys, we want it to be impossible for the user to hassle us on the phone so make
this basic thing as difficult as possible for them”… but I somewhat doubt it, but even
if that was the case, there are times where us as agencies have to forget about the
paycheck and do the right thing regardless!
There may also be a strategy that surrounds the broader non-functionality and they
are intentionally limiting it for some other reason unbeknown to us, but there is
no ‘user’ or ‘technical’ reason why this mobile site could not be a fully e-commerce
enabled mobi site which not only offers flight booking/changes but also other
transactional functions such as online check-in, car hire and hotel bookings. It is
especially easy on a site such as this (airline) due to no requirements for 3D secure
type payments (although those are in the offing). It would still have a ‘less is more’
design approach but instead of its current limited offering it could offer much more
use and relevance to those wanting to access via their mobile phone. Transactional
functionality is not restricted to smartphones, even the most basic of web enabled
phones (available for R300 on pay as you go) have this ability.
For me, this site demonstrates everything that is bad about the way SA brands and
their agencies approach digital technology and it is clearly wrong and more valuable
money goes down the drain. They are surely not doing it on purpose, but these guys
just need to change who they get advice from when making decisions in the digital
space.
You’re behind some progressive mobisites like Ster Kinekor and Computicket.
Can you give us a glimpse of how these sites are evolving? (if you’re subject to
confidentiality ignore this Tim)
Prezence built SterKinekor.mobi over 4 years ago now and is starting to show its
age but all those years ago gave SA a glimpse (and a very big hint) as to what was
coming in the mobile space and the importance of mobile commerce. Much has
progressed in usability and handset detection and adaptation since then and we
are very much looking forward to the release of SK2 ‘The sequel’ in a month or so.
The new SK mobile site will recognize and adapt to the newer phones a lot better
to give an enjoyable experience including geolocation, better quality trailers and a
much slicker search and book process, but also offer everything the most basic user
needs for mass penetration. More importantly it will be available to all mobile web
users and will be bolting in all new methods of payments, wallets and tools to aid
the unbanked and the ‘un-credit-carded’ along a constantly evolving roadmap as the
technology involves.
Computicket themselves have recently become a lot more than just an event ticket
company with the addition of a very strong flights, hotel and car hire offerings.
Needless to say, this will of course be mobilized to take advantage of the benefits
that brings to the user. When mobilizing anything in Africa we look at deploying
lowest common denominator technologies and a design approach to enable access
for all, but have the ability to upwards enhance for the smarter phones. This
essentially means that even through mobi technology we are able to detect the
advanced features of some phones and automatically and subsequently enhance the
mobi site’s features to take advantage of these. Examples of this include: GPS and
mapping/directions capability, HD video and streaming audio as well as more user-
functional enhancements such as Ajax, HTML5 and dynamic CSS.
We’re seeing a significant growth in mobile browsing – how would a retailer
like, say Pick n Pay, can take advantage of mobile?
Well, in theory there is very little PnP could not do on their mobile site that they do
on their web site and enable all their current commerce activities, but obviously for
major ‘basket size’ sites (size meaning the number of items rather than their value)
involving users purchasing large varieties of products in a single transaction on a
small device comes with more challenges than using a large screen, keyboard and
mouse.
Whilst mobilizing a retailer with millions of products is not a problem (as great
usability allows the user to drill down and find them), it is purely the amount and
variety of items that a user may require on a weekly or monthly shop that would
make usability slightly more of a challenge on a smaller device. That said, there is
no reason why the functionality should not be there if you really did want it, after
all, the technical functionality to add one item to a basket is the same as adding 500
items, it just takes more effort on the user’s side to find and add the 500!
PnP of course also allows you to save your large weekly or monthly shops. This
helps mobile quite significantly as additions and amends to this saved basket of
500 items is much less time consuming to order via mobile. In our view, there is no
reason why you should exclude any possible digital functionality from mobile. If
you made the effort to develop it for web or your other digital channels then there
is twice as much reason (population usage) to make a little more of an effort and
enable it for mobile.
Mobile brings all sorts of other advantages to a major retailer such as a Pick n Pay
such as real-time vouchering for redemption at the POS, basket suggestions as
you walk through the store and in-store price scanning and comparisons. Every
one of the customers walking around the store have a mobile phone in their hand,
and this furthers the opportunities for a bricks and mortar retailer to enhance
consumer interaction. For the non bricks and mortar retailers or those with much
smaller basket sizes such as wine clubs, electronics, books, music and clothing, there
is every reason to go mobile, however some of the biggest brands in this regard
have not even activated ordering over traditional web channels. In the UK you will
struggle to find a high street retailer who has not enabled online ordering and is
not in the process of mobilizing those services. the logistics of affordable and safe
delivery in SA can no longer be an excuse.
Do you foresee people actually ordering and paying for groceries via their
mobile phones?
In certain circumstances absolutely (see above)… but why would we stop even the
few if they wanted to, although not ubiquitous, there are handsets that would make
this as easy as the web, and whilst it would probably be very much a long winded
process on lower end handsets – if you had to do your shop and you did not have
the luxury of a PC you would be grateful for the ability to do it. At this stage for a
large grocer I think the focus would be in managing and adjusting their preselected
monthly shop and those more premium items and packaged offers such as a case
of ‘Winter wine collection’, ‘Braai for 4 hamper’, etc. This is where context comes
in where we properly analyze why a user might be using the mobile to access the
brand and the circumstances surrounding that access. The retailer is actually best
positioned to determine what those ‘just in time purchases’ might be as well as
the ‘Oh damn I forgot’, or ‘I cant be bothered’ packaged type products.
The approach to getting all of these things right and providing a great mobile
and product offering whilst taking the user, context, content and the technology
into consideration is what Prezence call ‘mobilizing’. Just making it smaller is not
enough.
“Thanks Tim – and thanks for doing a brilliant presentation at the Jozi Heavy Chef
last night.”
After last night’s informative Heavy Chef Session with the inimitable Tim Bishop, the founder of Prezence Digital, we asked him a few pointed questions on his thoughts and observations about building mobile sites in South Africa.
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