35 Ways To Test Your Mobile Web Site - Mobile Marketing Starter Kit Chapter 3
Posted by victor on Sep 16, 2007 in Best Practices, Emulation Testing, Mobile Resources, Starter Kit
This is the third installment of the Mobile Marketing Starter Kit Series that I kicked off in July. All of these posts are filed under Starter Kit if you need to get caught up. The goal is to continue adding helpful resources for professionals in the mobile marketing community. There is no set order, if I write about a new topic I’ll generally issue it a new Chapter number. However, I may go back and install additional posts within a previous chapter or allow a guest writer to do that same.
So if you’re in the mobile marketing space and want to get some exposure on a topic for this series contact me. I will let you talk about your company (are you listening mobile marketing geeks) in these posts provided that the majority of your post is contributing to the Starter Kit theme for the mobile marketing community.
The theme for this installment is obviously testing. Testing is really important for mobile marketing folks; it’s absolutely critical that you test your campaigns and content to see how they’re received on various devices prior to launch or your campaign will never get off the ground. What you don’t want to do is launch and then discover 35% of your audience is using a device that is not capable of rendering your content. The root cause of this type of failure is going to be lack of testing and that will really reflect poorly.
So with that said here’s a web site that can help you test your mobile web site, free.
dotMobi has a fairly exhaustive emulator that will run your mobile web site through 35 tests to determine how it will appear on a mobile handheld device. I recently installed a wordpress mobile edition plugin for my blog so I thought I’d use it as my test for this post.
Here’s how the emulator impersonates my site on a Nokia N70. Oh and you have the ability to cycle your mobile site through several other types of emulators too which didn’t get any better for me.
My blog is average at best according to their test emulator… yikes. So, if I were planning on launching a mobile awareness campaign to promote my blog I’d delay until I addressed the issues that have been identified.
Overall, the test summary indicates 21 passes so perhaps I’m slightly better than average in my mind but there are 4 failures and so it’s a good idea to understand what those are.
An area my site didn’t fare so well in was Compliance Testing… whoops, maybe I am just average, these are important.
The valid markup is something that I might be able to address, in my particular instance I’m running wordpress and so I’m not really interested in monkyeing around with the markup. However, in a campaign setting I’d have to address this issue or my content might not appear as I had originally intended.
XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML MP) is a content type declaration that appears to be missing in the mobile version of my blog. I might be able to address this by reviewing the suggested XHTML MP Doctypes that dotMobi has made and plugging that into my system. However, in my case I’m using a wordpress plugin so I’ll alert the developer of the plugin and see if he can implement the upgrade not just for me but all of the folks that are using this plugin.
Here are the suggested XHTML MP Doctype declarations that dotMobi has made for me.
If you’d like more information on XHTML MP, Wikipedia has a nice reference on the topic and the evolution of mobile web standards.
There are few unique features in the dotMobi test system that I’ve not seen anywhere else, two of which are illustrated in this scorecard I received on my blog. The first two scores across the top show my stinky score and overall file size which appears to be lightweight (good thing). Look closely at the two features across the bottom though. These are unique. Estimated cost by Country and estimated speed by network technology.
This is spectacular information; I wish it could be expanded to include other Countries. Marketers would be thrilled to know what the cost of receipt estimates look like while testing campaign variations. Who knew campaign optimization would include something like lowering the cost for the end user! This is another reason why mobile marketing is different, end users have data plans of one type or another… they’re paying to look at your stuff, so why not take advantage of a tool that can help you make optimizations in this area.
Look at the level of detail that is implemented, this is impressive; here are the checks that my blog was measured against. I do have a Google sitemap and I believe my plugin assigned it a nutty file extension like sitemap.xml.gz and so I’ll bet it’s not finding that.
Green=pass; Red=fail; Silver=comment; Orange=warning.
In the event of a failure or warning in any particular area a hyperlink’d shortcut is offered to help you individually address these issues. The shortcut takes you off to a new window to prevent leaving your test.
To sum it up here are the 35 tests that the dotMobi emulator will execute against your mobile site.
- Multiple device selection
- File size check
- Estimated cost
- Estimated speed
- Mime types
- Character encoding
- Pop up windows
- Alt Text
- Image maps
- Specify images sizes
- Measures
- Page title
- Use of stylesheets
- Stylesheet dependency
- Objects or scripts
- Auto refresh
- Redirection
- Default Input Mode
- Provide defaults
- Page size limit
- Large graphics
- Tables
- Nested tables
- Tables for layout
- Access Keys
- Caching
- External resources
- Avoid free text
- Structure
- Google sitemap
- Form submit buttons
- XHTML mobile profile
- Valid markup
- Second level domain
- No frames
You can test your mobile web site at dotMobi. Leave a comment if you have some other really useful mobile website testing tools that you use.
MissDanni | Nov 6, 2007 | Reply
Excellent article and very helpful - Thanks!
Mahjong | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
This is a most excellent article, Unfortunately I read this part 3 first. Going to read part 1,2 and then this again to get the full extent of all of this great information. Thanks so much Victor!
Billo | Feb 15, 2008 | Reply
Ah, actually I didn’t realize that there are two more parts. Where can I find them?
victor | Feb 15, 2008 | Reply
Billo -
I tag these under Starter Kit, you can find them all here:
http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/category/starter-kit/
enjoy
Yopi | Mar 20, 2008 | Reply
Should we really worried about making websites for mobile? I think mobile devices will be more flexible and more ability to access the websites…eg iPhone…
victor | Mar 21, 2008 | Reply
It will be nice when that day comes but for now we don’t have a choice Yopi.
cep telefonları | Mar 26, 2008 | Reply
I have been developing wap sites since 2001. Good article, thx man.
Peter Fry | Apr 11, 2008 | Reply
I believe mobile websites are going to become the next ‘wave’. Most people don’t know their websites have to be adapted to be viewed on mobile phones. Most people don’t realise that mobile websites can be viewed on mobile phones in areas where websites cannot be viewed due to lack of coverage. I love the stat that says there are more mobile phones in China than people in the USA! Has your website been adapted yet? Are you advertising onto mobile phones yet? If not why not?
Internet Marketing Blog | Sep 7, 2008 | Reply
Great info! I’ve always wanted to a little gadget to test some of my sites and view how it shows and the stats for a mobile phone. Thanks!
Riggie - Tips on Article Writing | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the article, now I finally know how to setup my blog for mobile users.
I’m sure the number of mobile users will explode in the coming years.
Suedafrika Reisen - Martina | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
We’re starting to use the Wordpress plug-ins and it never occurred to use to use the wordpress mobile edition plug-in.
Thanks for the tip. Now our customers can see our blog via mobile devices too.
Praksah Thapa | Oct 15, 2008 | Reply
nice article
creative agency | Oct 22, 2008 | Reply
The next evolution in internet usage is already happening with entry level smart phones. I don’t think it will make a huge impact if user interaction is needed since it can be difficult to type on a phone.
Eyal | Oct 31, 2008 | Reply
An excellent article - Thanks.
Found your blog just recently and love it.
For someone that deals with world wide cheap mobile calls and has a network of over 7000 (and growing) mobile users from around the world, I find your blog to be inspiring.
Free Marketing eBooks | Nov 9, 2008 | Reply
Twitter is a great source for mobile marketing!
Mona | Nov 13, 2008 | Reply
Online shopping is now a easy way of buying anything which they want by using the internet.so people want to know more about this.
Its a nice post about the same thing.
Thanks
London Tours | Jan 3, 2009 | Reply
This is a really good blog. I think now is definately the time to start gearing your site towards mobile viewing and transactions.
Used Engines | Jan 3, 2009 | Reply
Very helpful post! Keep em coming.
ask web directory | Jan 25, 2009 | Reply
Great post. And yes, the next step can be mobile marketing via smartphones. Almost the whole population has smartphones and its a better way for marketing. Love the post. and your blog is awesome too. Keep it up. Cheers
Crayden | Jan 29, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for the article very informative
cheap calling cards | Feb 7, 2009 | Reply
Nice post. Most of the websites are now looking to build a mobile version of their site to get more customers/visitors. There are 2 ways to look at this.
1. Build web sites that can be viewed using mobiles.
2. Enhance the software in mobile phones to view the normal websites.
I believe both methods are very important.
Nokia E Series | Feb 26, 2009 | Reply
Great post.
I agree with the earlier comment. I believe phone manufacturers are looking at the second option now. Enhancing the handset to view normal websites. But for now, i guess the first method is important than the first. “Building web sites that can be viewed using mobile phones.”
Thanks for sharing the information.
sunday best | Apr 8, 2009 | Reply
Nice article. Online marketing is growing rapidly. Mobile phones can access the internet too. So marketing via the internet is very cheap and very effective. Having a mobile phone version of a site is very important. Thanks for sharing the information.
Unlocked Phones | May 8, 2009 | Reply
I have been working on making some of my existing web properties compatitble with mobile devices. Your article had several pieces of information that I have not found anywhere else and you wrote this two years ago! Thanks and great job.
Graco Car Seats | May 20, 2009 | Reply
Nice article. These days mobile phones have so many options. They are becoming more like hand held computers. Since mobile phones are capable of connecting to the internet most companies have a mobile phone version of their web site. Internet marketing is the cheapest. But it is very effective. So this is a timely topic. and your article was very informative. Thanks for sharing.
Ali Hussain | Jun 12, 2009 | Reply
These day WAP is being used in a lot of mobiles specially after introduction of 3G mobiles
Lovelinks | Jun 24, 2009 | Reply
Yes, with newer and smarter phones it’s possible to access any site without a hassle. So the need of a mobile site for a product is becoming lesser and lesser as the technology grows. 3G and HSPA allow fast internet and it’s becoming very popular.
Crandell | Jul 1, 2009 | Reply
Hello, I found your blog in a new directory of blogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, Your blog looks good. Have a nice day.