Mobile Fix: iPad2, location based SMS & mobile SEO
Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, on the launch of the iPad2, location based SMS and mobile SEO…
So what happened this week? Oh yes – Steve Jobs showed up to announce the new iPad. Whilst it’s great to see him back at work we’re not as excited by the iPad2 as many.
Yes it’s thinner and faster. It has a camera – front and back. You can decide whether the hardware switch works as a mute or an orientation lock. It comes in white and has a cool cover. The killer mac apps of Movie and Garage Band are now optimized for the iPad.
So it’s improved – and it’s the same price. So if you are RIM, HP, Samsung and the rest of the pack producing tablets, it’s back to the drawing board as no-one is going to buy anything other than an iPad this year.
But to us, it’s more iPad 11 than iPad 2. All the new features are incremental and the fact they can ship it next week shows it been planned for a while.
Our money is on iPad3 being launched in time for Christmas. Now that should be very special.
Location based messaging
Whilst location based advertising is a hot topic, it is location based SMS that seems to be making the most progress – probably as messaging an opted in audience seems less spam like.
O2 launched their service a while ago – with Starbucks and M&S amongst the testers – and now ATT are launching a US version. Blyk wrote the book on how permission based text can be used as a very effective marketing tool, but the danger is that these messages will be seen as intrusive if they are not always really relevant.
Mobile SEO
The vast majority of websites are not mobile optimized (Google say 78%) and this is costing businesses lots more money than it would cost to fix.
We typically find the value of the additional volume of search made available by being mobile friendly, more than covers the investment in adapting the site.
Google have some interesting pointers here on how to make the mobile site easy to find through search – covering the emerging area of mobile search engine optimization
This is going to be really important because one day Google will correct the major anomaly in their search results; the fact they currently don’t include whether a site is mobile optimised in the quality score. Everything Google does is to ensure that the user gets the best results possible – so when they know I’m using an iphone why do they show me a page that won’t work on my device?
When they make this switch – and reward mobile optimisation – where will your site show up?
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