6 months ago I purchased a Motorola Xoom tablet as the old laptop was creaking and groaning and the wife kept pinching my work laptop. I am a big fan of the Android operating system, and having an HTC Desire HD phone, I soon got to grips with the Android 3.0 interface.
Having passed the tablet onto my wife – who loves it, we have discovered a few frustrations and it’s not with the device itself. It’s with websites you view. Now I am the first to appreciate that tablets are new to the market in comparison with the laptop / notebook however they have been purchased in significant numbers for the past 2 years. So why are some of the big players still not optimising for tablets.
Problem 1 – You are a Phone
When serving a page to a tablet, the server thinks it’s a mobile phone. This often means a text version or stripped down version of the website is made available. Now if this website has the same functionality as the “normal” version then all is good, however many websites lose key functionality.
Example – The Next website allows you to view products and purchase, however if you want to make a payment to your next account, this function does not exist.
Solution – offer a view full website link which will over-ride the server selection and ask it to serve the full website
Problem 2 – Download the App
Mobile and tablet applications are an excellent way of getting consumers interacting with your brand. They can offer key functionality to the mobile and tablet user, designed in a way which makes best use of their interface. There are 2 key issues that crop up time and again
- We’ve developed the iPhone app but have no Android App – missing a real chunk of the market given that the Android platform is now more popular worldwide than the iOS (source Gartner).
- We have an Android App but your version of Android is too old / new
Example – The Tesco application was launched on iPhone approximately 6 months ago and has only just come to Android. However if you are on 3.0, then you cannot find it in the Marketplace. Oh yeah the mobile version of the website is terrible for shopping.
Solution – sort out mobile version of website.
In short, tablets are another medium to which people are consuming content, be it text, images, video and it is important that your brand is accurately represented within this “mobile” marketplace. If you would like to chat to us further about how to make your online presence penetrate further into the mobile / tablet market, please give us a call on 0114 2679277.
