The mobile Web sucks, despite the iPhone

The story: The Apple’s iPhone 3G and apps from the App Store are so cool that everyone seems to forget that the mobile Web still, well, sucks. If we don’t watch out, the Yellow Pages are going to make a comeback. The good news: Techies who really know how to develop will be in demand.

We all remember the old adage about “garbage in, garbage out.” The best applications fail if the data provided is dirty. Similarly, the best mobile device fails if the Web sites visited deliver a crummy experience. “Most sites on the Web are almost maliciously designed [without thought for] the mobile user,” says Bruce Clay, president of an Internet marketing consulting firm bearing his name.

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“The industry is still taking desktop Web sites and repurposing; maybe 1 percent are designed around mobility,” he says. Here’s the text from a slide — presented earlier this year by the World Wide Web Consortium — that does a great job presenting the problem:

While commuting to work, user sees a URL on a billboard.

“Hey — I’ve just bought a snazzy new phone with access to ‘the Web,’ right? I’ll give it a try!”

Works for 15 minutes to figure out how to enter a URL into his phone’s browser.

Seems to load something, but logos and images are so huge that it’s impossible to make sense of the user interface on the small phone screen. Tries to log in to favorite Web mail system.

“Sorry, your browser doesn’t support cookies!”

Throws phone out train window.

Clay notes that location awareness is one of the key attributes of any site that mobile users might visit. This is especially true for sites advertising local businesses, such as restaurants, movie theaters, and dry cleaners. The user wants to do a quick search, for, say, a Thai restaurant near her office, see the address, then perhaps a map, and certainly get a phone number to make a reservation. But all too often, that key information is buried a couple of clicks away.

Even worse, many shops don’t even come up in a search: “I can’t tell you how many businesses I’ve searched for using Verizon’s Superpages and have come up empty-handed. I did a search for Subway just the other day, and do you know what came up? Nothing. I could have gone to the Subway Web site, I’m sure, but I didn’t. I chose to do a search, which I’m sure is how many people use the Web.”

The result: Lost business for Subway and a user frustrated with Verizon — the classic lose-lose proposition.

A good portion of the blame for the dismal performance of the mobile Web belongs with developers stuck in old ways of doing things, says Clay. And don’t blame the tools, he adds. “The mobile app is within the reach of current technology and the skill set of most developers,” he says.

There’s a bit more blame to apportion here. Providers like AT&T haven’t done a very good job in making 3G work. High-speed mobile bandwidth is still limited, and because the carriers are in the driver’s seat, it may be some time until we see an improvement.

And unkept promises add to the problem: The flawed launch of the iPhone 3G is a good example. Users in many parts of the country found that the cool handheld wasn’t running mobile applications much faster than the original despite Apple’s claims of “twice as fast.”

The bottom line: The mobile Web is a great opportunity whose progress is being, well, retarded by Web 1.0 thinking and the usual lack of effort and imagination on the providers. Smart developers have a great opportunity to fix this (and make real money) if they can only make the right attitude adjustment.

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