Darby Sieben - » Mobile Search

Mobile Applications Bring Local Relevancy to Gluten-Free Restaurants and Drive iPhone Sales?

Darby Sieben — Fri, 28 May 2010 18:52:22 +0000

I have a very close friend of mine that was diagnosed with Celiac’s disease. In case you are not aware, Celiac’s is a is an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine that occurs in genetically predisposed people of all ages from middle infancy onward. Read more at Wikipedia or Celiac.com.

The way to manage Celiac’s is to go on a strick Gluten-Free diet (or the removal of all wheat product from your diet). If my friend eats food with gluten in it, it can put her in bed for a couple of days and can be quite painful. On a personal note, I have also moved to a gluten-free reduced diet with my wife since the fall of last year.

Since my wife and I started our gluten-free reduces lifestyle we find the web is a pretty good place to go for generic information on going gluten-free. One of the challenges is looking for for gluten-free restaurants in cities. Not saying that it does not work but here are my specific issues with using the web.

Try – “gluten-free in XXXXX” where XXXXX is any city. You will usually end up with links to information sources on celiac’s or gluten-free and some resources of Gluten-Free restaurants. Some local businesses who have done a good job of optimizing for this keyword will rise to the top, but in a lot of cases, I notice businesses who say they have gluten-free options which does not mean they have a specific gluten-free menu. As my friend pointed out, it can be extremely frustrating to find details on either gluten-free menu’s or restaurants that cater to people with Celiac’s (which BTW cross-contamination can be a big issue).

So my specific issue with the web:

1) results for a city are usually a hodgepodge or results of “information” sites and some local sites

2) some of the directories have way to many restaurants come up under gluten-free but there is no information as to specific gluten-free menus or how they prevent cross-contamination. Net effect, not really relevant.

3) I need to be in front of computer. This can be a real challenge when you are on the go to have to boot up your computer. My mobile phone is always on me and trying to surf the web on a mobile phone can be challenging at best.

I have recently discovered a really cool application for my iPhone called Celiac Feed. In a nutshell; a user generated application that works based on the location of your iPhone to provide you with a list of restaurants/bakeries in your area that provide gluten-free options. The locations only make the list when one of the users recommends. In the Celiac world I have found out that people love to share information and really support each other. Therefore, the level of trust from these recommendations goes way up.

This application was probably one reason why my friend decided to purchase her iPhone as opposed to a Blackberry. She was on the fence for awhile in terms of which one she would buy. After I showed her this application (and although the information in Canada is limited) and the user base seems pretty small at this point, she decided on the iPhone and has been active on this application every since.

This got me thinking about the major shift that is happening to mobile. Was this one case where the application drove a sale of hardware and how many times a day is this happening now? Not sure if you agree this is a profound as I think it is, but I find it very interesting that a tiny niche application can drive a $500+ sale. For me, this is transformative as more and more devices become ubiquitous, it will be the utility of the device that will drive sales.

For niche local based applications, smart phones are far more superior than trying to search on the web. As an example, this morning at the Bed and Breakfast we are staying in (The Cottage in Qualicum Beach, BC) the owners knew we had people coming with a gluten-free intolerance and actually went out and purchased Gluten-Free bread for us. The bread itself was amazing, it actually tasted like real bread. They bought it at a place called Village Bulk Foods that has in it a Silly-Yak Bakery (a gluten-free kitchen) where they make breads, muffins and more.

So I immediately added this a recommendation to Celiac Feed along with my comments for everybody in this community. This was easier that trying to go to the web to post and is now immediately available to this mobile community.

If you have a gluten-free intolerance and an iPhone, I strongly recommend you download and Celiac Feed application it works well. More people need to use and contribute to it to make it really rock in Canada.

Here are some screenshots of the application from my location in Qualicum Beach, BC.

Have you tried other gluten-free applications for your smart phone? Please comment below with your experiences in using mobile in a niche way.

Which is the Best Canadian ‘Mobile Web’ Local Search Product for the iPhone?

Darby Sieben — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 04:57:41 +0000

Well it is Friday night and I had another week of travelling. This week I was down at the Chirp Conference (first developers conference for Twitter) in San Francisco. The team at TechCrunch did a great job of covering the conference, here are some articles to check out if you have not already:

– Twitter has 105,779,710 Registered Users, Adding 300K A Day
- Twitter Adds Places To Its Geo-Tweets, Just Don’t Call It A Check-In
- Live From Chirp: Twitter’s Platform Roadmap
- Ev Explains Twitter’s Move Into Mobile Apps: “Otherwise We Are Failing Users”

So enough about Chirp, this has been covered extensively this week.

While I am waiting for my wife I was playing with my iPhone, actually wishing I had an iPad (after the Chirp conference and speaking to a number of people about their iPads, I am convinced that I need to buy one, but that for another day). Back to my iPhone – I was playing with Mobile Web, not iPhone applications and I got to wondering about the Mobile Web experiences for Canadians?

So here is what I did.

I visited the following sites through my Safari browser on my phone. Google.ca, YellowPages.ca, Yahoo.ca, and 411.ca. I tried to visit yelp.ca, but it gave me their actual website, not their mobile enhanced so they are not included.

I then entered the exact search term “restaurants toronto” for each site and was presented with their results. The screenshots below are the results page for each of the above websites. Check them out yourself.

So here is what I want to know? Based on the screenshots below for the search “restaurants toronto” and nothing but the screenshots below, which mobile application provides the best results? I am going to leave it as best results, you decide whether best results mean content, look and feel or brand loyalty.

In alphabetical order:

411.ca

Google Web

Yahoo Web

YellowPages.ca

One more screenshot from an application that I am testing on my iPhone (it is not available to the general public yet) called Urbanizer, mood based searching. This application is going to rock. You can subscribe to get notified when it is available in the app store.

Urbanizer

If we are missing your favorite mobile web application, put the URL in the comments, I would be happy to add it to this post.

Google’s Mobile Ad Distribution – Free Until November 18 – Opt-Out Afterwards

Darby Sieben — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 01:17:37 +0000

Is your website enabled to be seen on a cellular phone? Are you using Google Adwords to promote your business? If you answered yes to both questions your business may already be displayed as part of Google’s Mobile Ad strategy. I came across a posting by Michael Blumenthal called Google Intros Search Ads on Google Mobile Search in which a letter was sent from Google indicating their short-term strategy for mobile ads and the criteria to be displayed. Here is a copy of that letter:

We are happy to announce a new feature that will allow you to easily reach additional qualified customers who are searching
Google from their mobile phones.

In the next few days, your search ads will be eligible to run on Google Mobile Search pages (like they currently do on Google.com).
We are offering this feature – and any resulting clicks – for free through November 18, so you can experiment with the rapidly growing mobile platform while still reaching qualified customers.

Each ad’s eligibility will be determined by its landing page and only ads with landing pages that can be adapted for viewing on mobile browsers will be shown. You can monitor each ad’s performance via a special performance tracking page within your account called “Performance Data: Search Ads on Google Mobile Search.”

Again, you will not be charged for clicks on these ads until November 19, at which time we will begin charging the usual CPC prices. And as always, you may opt-out of this feature at any time.

We hope you find this new feature helpful and profitable, and we urge you to learn more about it at our AdWords Help Center:

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=72226

Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

If you fit the current criteria that you may already be taking advantage of this medium. Considering the growth of mobile and the mobile applications it is probably a good time to consider ensuring that your business can be viewed on a mobile phone. Not sure where to start – two suggestions; 1) find a design company that specializes in WAP, WML, and XHTML MP or 2) if you want to consider the process yourself, I suggest that you start by reading, Creating Web Content for Mobile Phone Browsers.

Here are some highlights from an article in January of this year titled – Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users – which explores how large this industry has already become. The point to these stats, if you are a local business, is that your customers are either using or will be using mobile as a means to learn and connect with your business. Ensure that you are ready to take advantage of this opportunity.

* Worldwide there are about 800 million registered automobiles
* Today there are 1.3 billion fixed landline phones in the world
* Today there are about 1.5 billion TV sets in use in the world . (TV is often shared, especially in Asia where families are also large. So you might easily have 6 or even 10 watching the same TV show. The reach of TV is much beyond the 1.5 billion sets in use.)
* Today 1.4 Billion people carry at least one credit card.
* In most countries it is illegal for under 18 year olds to have credit cards
* There are about 850 million PCs
* In total over 750 million people access internet content via a mobile phone today
* About the total PC population or about 850 million people, access the web via a computer.
* During 2007 the first cross-over from PC to Mobile phones will happen, with more users accessing via phone than PC.
* The total shipped PDA population is about 85 million, most which are replacements.
* Thre are 85 Million iPod in use
* DVD recorders/ PVR shipments are under 100 million.
* Camcorders, are under 100 million total shipped (many as replacements).
* Gaming consoles have shipped near 200 million units, out of which 150 million are second generation (PS2/Xbox) or newer.
* The (stand-alone) digital camera has achieved shipments of near 300 million.
* There are 2.7 billion Mobile phones shipped (technically 2.7 billion in January, not December). They sold 950 million phones last year and the total worldwide mobile subscriber base grew from 2.1 billion to 2.7 billion.
* Phones are replaced every 18 months (and this is still shrinking)
* USA has reached 75% penetration for mobile phones
* The Western European average per capita penetration for mobile phones is already 110%
* Italy, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Israel have penetration rates at about 140%
* China adds 6 million phones every month, India adds 7 million phones every month.
* Finland, Norway, Denmark and Portugal – each countries with 120% or more penetration rates – Mobilephones are less than 6 million units total.
* SMS Messaging Is Biggest Data App On Planet
* On the internet there are about 1.5 billion e-mail boxes, maintained by about 800 million people.
* 1.8 billion people are doing SMS texting.
* Last year over 42% of Americans were active in SMS already
* E-mail is opened in 24 hours and replied to in 48 hours.
* SMS is read within 15 minutes on average and responded within 60 minutes.
* 65% of e-mail is spam, less than 10% of SMS is spam.
* In South Korea five separate credit card services are available on the three mobile networks
* In South Korea almost 100% of credit card based point-of-purchase sites accept payment via mobile phone credit (and charge) cards
* Two years from launch almost 10% of South Korean phone users watch digital broadcast TV on their phones
* The Pop Idol formats have earned a windfall of over 700 million dollars out of text messaging votes
* In 2005 already half of all phones sold were cameraphones so cameraphones outsell digital cameras by more than 4 to 1 .
* There are 3.2 Billion to 3.8 Billion radio users.
* 73% of the population now uses the mobile phone as their portable clock.
* 2.7 Billion phones in active use. There is a subscription for 40% of the planet’s population.
* The mobile telecoms industry earned 725 Billion dollars last year.
* Global music industry earns 16% of its revenues from mobile phones (mostly ringing tones);
* Videogaming earns 14% of its global revenues from mobile.
* Mobile telecom growth in dollar terms, from 2005 to 2006, was 105 billion dollars.

Mobile Search Platforms in Canada

Darby Sieben — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:25:33 +0000

I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss some of the mobile platforms that are available for users in Canada.

Although mobile search is not main stream yet, I think this is definitely one mode of search that has potential to expand and will become important for any local businesses to ensure they have placement within these mediums. There are 2 major barriers that I see to the mass adoption of mobile search in Canada:

1) Cell Phone Data Plans – in Canada we are not in a fortunate position with our cell phone carries in terms of competition. Meaning that as of this blog posting there are no unlimited data plans available, like our US counterparts or in Asia. This is a major barrier to the adoption of local search, but as the cell carries start to open up their data streams, I see growth.

2) User Interfaces – if you have ever tried to use a cell phone to surf the web, you have probably been frustrated by the experience. Although the interfaces today are much better than previous – I would still say that there is a long way to go yet. As a side note, I have had the opportunity to view and play with the Apple iPhone – very nice.

On the user interface front, I wanted to share with you the local search interface from the Nokia Mobile Search Platform. Nokia has signed a number of deals with local providers around the world to include in this application – in Canada, Yellow Pages Group is the partner using data from yellowpages.ca.

The Yellowpages.ca local search plug-in enables you to find local businesses and services from your Nokia mobile phone. You can search by business name, business type, or location. As well as a company’s address and phone number, you can get useful additional information and detailed color maps showing you how to find them.

Another platform that is working checking is the Yahoo Canada Mobile Platform. If you visit their site and enter your cell phone number, it will text you a link to install the application. This platform consists of a lot of different features – of interest for local business is their local search platform – btw, the data for this platform is provided by yellowpages.ca as well.

Above are just two examples of good user interfaces that are taking the right steps to bring local mobile search into the mainstream. As I play with more, I will blog about them as well.