The excellent Read/WriteWeb (a blog that anyone interested in communications and technology should be reading daily) is running coverage of the Future of Web Apps 2007 Conference in London, and yesterday in their post one line really made me stop. Under the section entitled ‘The Mobile Web’ they note that:
A very interesting fact that is obvious when you read it, but very interesting at the same time, is that there are up to 4 times more mobile devices in use around the world that have web access, than there are computer and laptops with web access.
Read/Write Web: the Future of Web Apps, Day2
Of course, that is not the same as saying that there are 4 times as many people accessing the web using mobile devices, but it does give you a feel for the incredible potential that is either latent, or in some cases ignored, in this channel.
Ignored? How many of you have tried to access your agency sites via a mobile device, like your phone? Does it render:
- properly
- poorly
- not at all
- don’t know…
To satisfy my curiosity, I did a quick survey of government sites (7 public service corporate sites, 3 Crown entities and 1 from the non-public service departments), to see how they fared. I was running Opera mini on a Nokia 6255.
The results? Much like the RSS survey I did, pretty discouraging. Despite the fact that there are 3.9 million mobile phones in New Zealand (apparently 74% of us own one), based on this small random sample, government websites are not built to serve content to these devices.
What did I find?
- only 2 sites had skip links
- 7 sites loaded (irrelevant) images
- 0 sites serve a
handheldstylesheet - only 5 of the 11 homepages validate
Of course, well structured HTML and CSS should render in any user agent, be it browser, text reader or phone, so a handheld stylesheet is really only an indication of an agency approaching this space strategically. The fact that 6 of the homepages don’t validate (albeit some fail for fairly trivial reasons, like dropped alt tags) speaks for itself.
While this is not a comprehensive look (if you have tried to download any of these sites to a phone, you will know why I stopped at 11), it raises the question of how we are positioning the government webspace for mobile users. Is it because it is (prohibitively) expensive to surf the web on phones here? Or are we missing just an opportunity to really utilise this channel?
2 Comments
The barrier to mobile data is, imho, cost and this article raises the relevant issues.
I also believe that the mobile channel is a very personal one, and any strategic approach to mobile delivery must be mindful of getting into people’s personal spaces. Particularly with reference to the business results that mobile content delivery is hoping to achieve, rather than just a “hey, lets put our whole website on everyone’s mobile phone” approach
Maybe we can begin by asking – what types of services (including information) would be enhanced through mobile delivery? i.e. a service that is personal and available anywhere?
As a starter for ten how about Family Planning services, and advice.
Good link Sam. Cost is definitely the factor for me.
As a ‘push’ channel, I couldn’t agree more. But for .govt.nz I think we are still some way from that sort of sophisticated approach. My take on it is that all our content should be accessible in a device neutral way, so that people can get what they need however they choose.
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