Interview with Martin Wilson, Head of Mobile Marketing, Yell.com (UK)
I Want It All & I Want it NOW
Local mobile search, which already accounts for some 20 percent of all search queries on the Mobile Internet, is gaining serious traction as consumers gravitate to services that meet their need for immediate information on-the-fly. Yell.com, a leading search engine providing local information services and directions,has taken local search services to the next level. Its two new mobile services, a dual application and browser-based approach developed by mobilePeople, enable users to do much more than search Yell.com’s directory of over 2 million business names, addresses, and telephone numbers free of charge.
The new service offer is chock-full of features, including an intelligent “regular request” list, an auto-suggestion function, zoomable maps and turn-by-turn directions, and a click-to-call button that allows users to find and contact a business in two to three clicks. The path-breaking also adds Web 2.0 functionality to the mix, enabling users to save the information in their phone contacts for later reference, or share it with their peers using text. Martin Wilson, head of mobile marketing for Yell.com, talks about the service and the paradigm-shift in local mobile search services it represents.
Question: Yell.com has an impressive track record in mobile search, having introduced the first mobile search services in 2001. What are your key learnings and how have you incorporated them into your new dual approach?
Wilson: A key challenge is developing for the wide variety of handsets on the market. More importantly, these services are about more than delivering data; they have to be designed from the ground-up to deliver users what they want when they are in a mobile environment. They want information, but they also want to interact with it. They want to store it in their phone contacts, they want to send it to friends and colleagues, and they demand a good user experience.
We’ve taken what we know about users from focus groups, and from our on-going dialogue with users in a dedicated blog we created to discuss and improve service usability, and incorporated these important insights into the service. Take the auto-suggest feature, for example. We know the businesses consumers are most likely to search for on the mobile and we’ve preloaded this information into the new application. Now it’s much quicker and easier for users to find what they want. We can provide immediate results, which is a key requirement of local mobile search services going forward. Users also want to get to where they’re going, which is why we’ve added zoomable maps and directions.
Users want to do something with the information once they have it. That’s why our new service offers a number of features that allow users to act on the information, click to call, view map to help find, save to contacts and an ability to share with other people. It’s important to be able to say to a friend “Meet me in the bar tonight and here it is. Users don’t want to only consume information; they want to do with it what they will. “
Question: What are the advantages of an application over a browser experience?
Wilson: It’s all about immediacy, usability, and saving time and effort. In a browser environment functionality is lost just because the service is not able to interact with the phones features in the same way. With an application we can deliver a much more feature-rich service that is there when users turn on the phone. A browser has to load the full service content, information and maps every time the user makes a request, a longer procedure that impacts the end-user experience.
Question: What capabilities did mobilePeople bring to the table and how did it improve usability of the service?
Wilson: For us it’s all about building thin applications and being able to port them to many devices. mobilePeople built the technology that essentially makes this possible. They also take users’ search queries and put them in a format that they can fire at our search engine, where we make the match and pass the information back to mobilePeople. It then presents this information in a clear and consistent way to the user, regardless of the handset or wireless network.
They are experts in evolving the mobile services we operate and in getting usability right. Their skill set is in keeping it simple, making it work well, and making it available on a wide range of handsets. I don’t know of anybody else that can go out and deliver services to the diversity of handsets currently on the market as rapidly as mobilePeople can.
Question: Local information is high on the list of what consumers want to look for with their mobile phones. Why is it so fundamental to the personal mobility experience?
Wilson: In a mobile environment users are more demanding, proximity and immediacy of often key drivers. Unlike the sit-back experience of searching on a PC, users lose patience if they aren’t delivered immediate and relevant results. They have a question and they demand a useful answer.
We have the content that supports this. Generic search engines such as Google and Yahoo! just don’t have the depth of local content to offer users the all relevant results may meet their need – and therefore can’t effectively provide a user with the true ability to compare and choose. If users type in “restaurant” for a location such as Soho, we’ll present them with all the information we have for that area and let the users choose. We have comprehensive local data and know what users expect.
We’ve been watching and learning how users needs differ when they’re mobile. It’s insight into what users expect that has allowed us to group together highly mobile relevant information in a number of categories so users can find what they want by simply clicking the category. This all adds to the ability to deliver the right results in a short click-distance. The previous applications delivered the information in around seven clicks. Now we can deliver it in three or four clicks. Our goal is to make the process even shorter.
Question: How does this help your advertisers achieve their business objectives?
Wilson: Presenting local information to users quickly, and enabling them to use and share that information, supports the success of the other parts of Yell’s business – Yellow Pages, yell.com and 118 24 7 – which are all about connecting buyers with sellers..We can collect and deliver richer content about our advertisers’ businesses and that enhances the end-user experience. A click-to-call function rounds out that experience, providing actionable answers. If users want to make a reservation or a purchasing decision, then they can find the business and click to make it happen.
To this end our mobile model is not about charging users for our services; we want to encourage usage. Being able to deliver a good user experience boosts local mobile search, and ultimately supports the advertising the model that is at the center of the directory services business.
Wilson: A key challenge is developing for the wide variety of handsets on the market. More importantly, these services are about more than delivering data; they have to be designed from the ground-up to deliver users what they want when they are in a mobile environment. They want information, but they also want to interact with it. They want to store it in their phone contacts, they want to send it to friends and colleagues, and they demand a good user experience.
We’ve taken what we know about users from focus groups, and from our on-going dialogue with users in a dedicated blog we created to discuss and improve service usability, and incorporated these important insights into the service. Take the auto-suggest feature, for example. We know the businesses consumers are most likely to search for on the mobile and we’ve preloaded this information into the new application. Now it’s much quicker and easier for users to find what they want. We can provide immediate results, which is a key requirement of local mobile search services going forward. Users also want to get to where they’re going, which is why we’ve added zoomable maps and directions.
Users want to do something with the information once they have it. That’s why our new service offers a number of features that allow users to act on the information, click to call, view map to help find, save to contacts and an ability to share with other people. It’s important to be able to say to a friend “Meet me in the bar tonight and here it is. Users don’t want to only consume information; they want to do with it what they will. “
Question: What are the advantages of an application over a browser experience?
Wilson: It’s all about immediacy, usability, and saving time and effort. In a browser environment functionality is lost just because the service is not able to interact with the phones features in the same way. With an application we can deliver a much more feature-rich service that is there when users turn on the phone. A browser has to load the full service content, information and maps every time the user makes a request, a longer procedure that impacts the end-user experience.
Question: What capabilities did mobilePeople bring to the table and how did it improve usability of the service?
Wilson: For us it’s all about building thin applications and being able to port them to many devices. mobilePeople built the technology that essentially makes this possible. They also take users’ search queries and put them in a format that they can fire at our search engine, where we make the match and pass the information back to mobilePeople. It then presents this information in a clear and consistent way to the user, regardless of the handset or wireless network.
They are experts in evolving the mobile services we operate and in getting usability right. Their skill set is in keeping it simple, making it work well, and making it available on a wide range of handsets. I don’t know of anybody else that can go out and deliver services to the diversity of handsets currently on the market as rapidly as mobilePeople can.
Question: Local information is high on the list of what consumers want to look for with their mobile phones. Why is it so fundamental to the personal mobility experience?
Wilson: In a mobile environment users are more demanding, proximity and immediacy of often key drivers. Unlike the sit-back experience of searching on a PC, users lose patience if they aren’t delivered immediate and relevant results. They have a question and they demand a useful answer.
We have the content that supports this. Generic search engines such as Google and Yahoo! just don’t have the depth of local content to offer users the all relevant results may meet their need – and therefore can’t effectively provide a user with the true ability to compare and choose. If users type in “restaurant” for a location such as Soho, we’ll present them with all the information we have for that area and let the users choose. We have comprehensive local data and know what users expect.
We’ve been watching and learning how users needs differ when they’re mobile. It’s insight into what users expect that has allowed us to group together highly mobile relevant information in a number of categories so users can find what they want by simply clicking the category. This all adds to the ability to deliver the right results in a short click-distance. The previous applications delivered the information in around seven clicks. Now we can deliver it in three or four clicks. Our goal is to make the process even shorter.
Question: How does this help your advertisers achieve their business objectives?
Wilson: Presenting local information to users quickly, and enabling them to use and share that information, supports the success of the other parts of Yell’s business – Yellow Pages, yell.com and 118 24 7 – which are all about connecting buyers with sellers..We can collect and deliver richer content about our advertisers’ businesses and that enhances the end-user experience. A click-to-call function rounds out that experience, providing actionable answers. If users want to make a reservation or a purchasing decision, then they can find the business and click to make it happen.
To this end our mobile model is not about charging users for our services; we want to encourage usage. Being able to deliver a good user experience boosts local mobile search, and ultimately supports the advertising the model that is at the center of the directory services business.
