Battle of mobile marketing: Client widgets vs. mobile sites

July 23, 2008

Michael Neidhöfer is CEO of Netbiscuits

By Michael Neidhöfer

There is no doubt that mobile users everywhere are hitting their Internet buttons more frequently. The question is how to get the right content up on the Mobile Web in order to market to them effectively?

With the latest smart phones soon hitting the market -- such as the iPhone and the Samsung Instinct -- coupled with recent unlimited data plans, the Mobile Internet is seeing an exponential increase in use with no sight in slowing down in the near future.

In fact, most recently Gartner predicted there would be more than two billion mobile Internet users by 2012.

The issue that arises is that the Internet, as we know it, has been optimized and created specifically for use on a PC.

Mobile phones, regardless of the latest device screen size or technology, are innately different and need content tailored for them rather than PCs.

So then, how do marketers go about developing for the mobile Web?

Currently, companies seem to have two clear paths leading to mobile Web: mobile clients and mobile sites.

The decision as to which is the best approach depends on what the company needs to accomplish and, most importantly, how big the audience is that they want to reach.

Enter the battle of client applications verses mobile sites.

The main advantages of client based mobile Web applications are that they provide very good possibilities for graphic design of user interfaces and keep content available even offline.

Furthermore, they often show faster reaction times and are sometimes easier to link to other telephone functions such as directories, camera and etcetera.

The main disadvantage of every client-based solution is that they initially need to be downloaded by the user and installed on the mobile -- a practice that will need to be repeated for every new release.

Many users are prevented from taking this step due to technical problems, security issues and a lack of clarity concerning costs involved.

Furthermore clients are always dependent on the mobile phone operating system and must often undergo costly adjustments for each individual terminal.

Mobile sites, on the other hand, do not require any installation.

They are immediately available over the browser and the sites' content and software are continuously updated unobtrusively to the mobile user.

Mobile sites also provide a greater scope of outreach than clients do, as nowadays practically all mobile phones have a browser.

Adjusting mobile sites and rich media content to various mobile terminals can be made 100 percent automatic. This means a massive reduction in development and testing expenses.

User interface design is also no longer an obstacle. Modern mobile phone browsers enable use of AJAX and Flash, thus creating a user experience similar to that of PC Web.

If a company is looking for a larger audience reach with as little hassle as possible, the mobile site is the clear winner.

Mobile site creation however, is not without its flaws. And, since mobile users expect to have a similar Web experience on their phone as they would on their computer, developing these sites for the variety of phones that are in the market becomes a daunting task without the proper tools.

Michael Neidhöfer is CEO of Netbiscuits, headquartered in Reston, VA. Reach him at .

Comments on "Battle of mobile marketing: Client widgets vs. mobile sites"

1. james pandreson says:

   September 5, 2008 at 6:31am

   The new Blueprint language (currently in preview form) allows developers to start building mobile widgets easily and quickly using straightforward XML.
   -------------------------------
   pandreson
   
   ethical
   
   

2. dean collins says:

   July 26, 2008 at 8:55pm

   Interesting how when listening to these mobile application developers http://mobileanalytics.com/forum/index.php?topic=135.0 none of them held out much hope for a write once run many solution like mobile flash/silverlight anytime soon.
   
   (the link is to a 2 hour video of a mobile roundtable discussion)
   
   Cheers,
   Dean

3. jamie wells says:

   July 23, 2008 at 7:56am

   "Modern mobile phone browsers enable use of AJAX and Flash, thus creating a user experience similar to that of PC Web." - this is news to me!