Mobile Tango™
The most efficient approach to getting mobile.
“We are seeing a very fundamental shift where increasingly, particularly among the young demographic…, the primary access to the internet is not through the PC, but through mobile devices.”
- Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of Engineering
Key Benefits:
- Rapid launch (often within weeks)
- Minimal client resource requirements
- Flexible platform: We can use our Mobile Tango™ platform to either transcode current websites to be mobile optimized on the fly, or write straight to client APIs.
- World class mobile design – We make mobile beautiful.™
Why Mobile Optimization?
According to Gartner, by 2013, over half of internet usage will be from mobile devices, yet today a large majority of websites do not offer a mobile-optimized experience.
Any user accessing a normal website from a mobile device will generally have a poor experience, resulting in high abandon rates and very low conversions. A mobile-optimized site can increase conversion rates to be equal to, or even higher than, rates on our clients’ standard websites.
What is Mobile Optimization?
In its most simple form, our Mobile Tango™ platform is creating new websites based on the information in our clients’ current large-format, PC/laptop websites. We create different websites based on the type of mobile device the user is accessing the site with. For older phones, we might create very simple sites that just highlight out client’s phone number and some basic facts, whereas for Smartphones, we might create an immersive experience to take advantage of GPS, compass, accelerometer and other features.
How does Mobile Optimization work?
First, we provide you a small piece of code to add to your primary website. This code detects the device being used to access your site. If the device is a mobile device, then the user is automatically redirected to the mobile version of the site appropriate to that particular device. All of this happens on the fly in hundredths of a second, and so is completely invisible to the end user.
What are Web Apps?
Web apps are just high-functioning mobile-optimized websites. An example is gMail for the iPhone — it is commonly called a “web app”, but for practical purposes, it does the same thing as the gmail.com website, so it is really a mobile-optimzed website. “Web app” and “mobile optimized” can largely be used interchangeably — “web app” just has a connotation that lots of functionality is included.
How does Mobile Optimization relate to native apps?
Mobile is rapidly evolving in two ways:
I. Consumers are navigating directly to sites using their browser — so, it is becoming imperative that companies develop mobile-optimized websites. A good implementation is Burger King, where the bk.com experience on an iPhone is very different from a PC, even though the user is entering “bk.com” into both devices.
II. By developing a mobile web site as the basis for a mobile strategy, companies can significantly reduce ongoing maintenance costs. Native iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile 7 Apps can be developed as wrappers to the underlying mobile web site. Only the top pages/navigation are written in native code (to ensure acceptance in app stores and a great user experience – as the user typically feels he/she is staying within a native app). Changes to most content can then be accomplished by changing the mobile HTML, thus reducing costs by (i) making changes only once across all platforms and (ii) obviating the need for re-submission to app stores.
Do I need apps at all, or can I just have a mobile web site?
Native iPhone, Android or Blackberry apps are deployed as components of a complete mobile strategy in order to fulfill specific functions, such as:
- Taking advantage of additional distribution through the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and other apps stores.
- Using certain functionality only available to native apps (such as accessing the camera or the phone’s contact lists).
- Offering immersive experiences (such as games)
Given our above architecture of starting with a mobile web site using our Mobile Tango™ platform, we can efficiently launch native apps for our clients that meet the above goals.
Some mobile web optimization projects that have launched using our Mobile Tango™ platform (including apps that contain mobile web optimization):
- United Educators Mobile Site
- BigTeams iPhone and Android Sports Apps