It’s Retail 101 again in mobile. We thought we saw (and learned) it all in the heyday of the mobile operator portals, but it’s all coming back if we examine the recent wave of app stores. From handset makers turned content/services providers (Nokia and Apple) to platform providers (Android), and from mobile operators (Vodafone and Telefónica) to independent app emporiums (GetJar) – the excitement is all about software applications stores, but the usability is hardly a crowd-pleaser.

However, before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s recall the issues and shortcomings that (in my view) put mobile operator portals at a disadvantage from the start.

It’s just common sense, really. Smart retailers make shopping a no-brainer by placing hot-selling items where consumers can see them. Mobile operators and content providers, on the other hand, forced users to navigate through multiple menus and sift through catalogues to find content they like. Mobile devices – with their screen-size limitations and restricted input capabilities – only exacerbate the problem.

Usability research from the same period (2003-2004) highlighted the scale of the problem. A WAP usability report produced in 2000 by Norman Nielsen Group, a usability and research firm in the U.S., highlights the scale of the problem (one that continues to this day!) and the gross mismatch between user expectations and reality.

It reported that users took an average of 120–150 seconds to locate content and concluded that, to be genuinely useful, mobile portals must be able to bring content to users within approximately 30 seconds.

Put another way, users are unlikely to discover content that is more than 30 seconds from the portal homepage. Norman Nielsen data shows most mobile users are capable of making 12 clicks in the space of 30 seconds.

That wouldn’t be so bad – except an analysis of 20 leading European mobile portals – conducted in 2002 by Mobile Metrix, a Swedish research and consultancy – revealed the average click-distance from the portal homepage to the desired content is at least 16. A closer examination of the content available within 12 clicks from the portals found that on average just over 35% of portal content services falls within this limit.

In other words, a whopping 65% of mobile content is positioned too far away from the homepage, making it invisible to users.

And then there is a benchmarking study a few years back conducted by Informa Telecoms & Media as part of a custom research project at the time. It revealed that users on a selection of mobile operator portals in the U.S., U.K. and Germany typically have to click through 10-40 screens to download some of the most popular ringtones or games.

Fast forward and we have app stores. And we have the same issues to tackle. (Although I might add that they still persist on mobile operator portals, by the way.)

The popularity of app stores turns up the pressure (again) on companies across the mobile value chain to improve discoverability and usability.

What needs to be done to make content findable and buyable? How (and why) should our experience on mobile complement our experience online? And where does the user fit in?

There’s no silver-bullet solution, but Tego Interactive Content Discovery Capsule, the first in our series of business strategy ‘cheat sheets’, will highlight some practical do’s and don’ts to help you tackle this serious problem and drive positive results (for you and your users). Please check back regularly – and be sure to follow Tego updates on Twitter (@tegointeractive and @alfredderose).

Tags: Content Discovery, discoverability, Mobile Content, Mobile Discovery, Mobile Internet

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Briefing Rooms, Business Strategy, Guest Columns, Mobile Content, On-Device Portals, Tego Interactive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.