Is it possible for a mobile phone to bring new business into your website? After all, they’re only designed to allow you to communicate, surely that’s got nothing to do with your website…
If talking and messaging are all people use a phone for it would be correct to say that it can’t help all websites, but these days phones are capable of so much more, and people use them for many more reasons too. Take the Nokia N95 for example, one of its major selling points was the 5 megapixel camera (with a Carl Zeiss lens, may I add) which allows the use to take photos with a level of quality comparable to the newest digital cameras. This can be coupled with a photo sharing websites such as Flicker or even Facebook, meaning your snaps can be published online within seconds of releasing the shutter.
Google have recently released their effort in the mobile phone market, the Google Android phone. Now this is where phones and websites really start working together. One application that has already been developed for the phone is known as CompareEverywhere, which allows the phone user to scan a barcode and immediately read reviews of the product and compare the price to what’s available online (or the shop down the road).
Of course, being Google, the Android phone runs on an open-source platform allowing any who knows Java to create these applications for free. So expect to see a lot of innovative ideas coming out of this phone. The iPhone runs in a similar way – they’ve also opened up their platform to the developer community, the only downside is that you have to own a mac to create an iPhone application. With Google Android being accessible to all, the iPhone could find itself sitting in second place as the Android community gets bigger and bigger.
See the Google Android phone being demonstrated by Google founder, Sergey Brin
At the recent FOWA Expo (Future of Web Apps) in London, Stefan Fountain of Soocial spoke about how he sees the mobile being used in the future, and what tomorrow has in store for the device. You can watch the video if you want to get all the details, but the overview was that the future is not about the device, but more about the services that the user can access. This fits in with Google and Apple allowing developers to create applications (services) which can act as a bridge between a website and their phone, giving access to all sorts of information and functionality from wherever you are.
We’re getting to the stage now where almost anything is possible if you combine different technologies in the right way. All it takes is a bit of imagination and your website could seriously benefit from a mobile phone. Just as a fictional example, if you run a huge chain of restaurants, a mobile phone application that shows the user the nearest restaurant and the chances of getting a table there tonight would be incredibly lucrative. Not only would something like this bring in new business, but it would set you far apart from the competition too.
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You are absolutely right, cell phones and barcode apps are definitely going to make retail and advertising interesting in the very near future. QR Codes (and other barcodes) are starting to pop up in various media… once this catches on (as it has in Japan) clever advertisers are going to find all kinds of unique ways to use this technology. I started a small website delineating some basics regarding cellphone and barcode use — http://www.cellphone-barcode.com — I think we are very near the point when cell phone use is going to change in a big way.
Thanks
Andy
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