Websites for cell phones
November 16 2007: 9:17 AM EST
Brett Dewey’s company thrives on spur-of-the-moment purchases. His North Hollywood, Calif., web business, WickedCoolStuff, collects $1 million a year for nostalgic merchandise such as Captain Picard action figures, Underdog lunch boxes, and toys based on Monty Python movies. His customers, mainly men in their late 20s, are more tech savvy than most online shoppers, but they aren’t chained to their computers. Even Star Trek fans venture outdoors.
So when Dewey heard about a new kind of website tailored to conduct e-commerce over cellphones, he jumped at the chance to make himself accessible to clients during virtually
all their waking hours. “If someone sees an advertisement, he may not remember it by the time he gets back to his computer,” he says. “But his phone is always on hand for an impulse buy.”
If the first wave of online business was all about getting a dot-com, the next may be about adding a dot-mobi. The new web address became available for the first time in May and is administered by Mobile Top Level Domain (mTLD; mtld.mobi), a private company based in Dublin. Sign up for a dot-mobi address and you’ll be required to stick to a list of best practices, such as using the xhtml language. Complex design elements such as frames are banished. “When a site is built that way,” says mTLD marketing director Vance Hedderel, “it’s guaranteed to work well on every cellphone in the world.”
Funny that it’s .mobi. Could have been .cell or anything else. Any any dot-com that really wants to cater to a cellphone market would probably be better off doing a mobile.sitename.com for mobile browsers.
But then again, if there is enough hype people will see value in anything 🙂
I’m still torn like many in the industry about the value and future use of .mobi IS it All Hype or has it got BITE?
Marcus, I think it is little more than “enough hype” when you see who is backing .mobi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.mobi#Sponsors_of_.mobi
And to keep pace with what and whom is developing their .mobi sites ve sure to check out: http://www.developing.mobi/
Makes me wonder if .mobi in the future will wrap itself up in Net Neutrality: the different boosts in speeds depending on how you access the Internet.
I feel there are just to many BIG BOYS involved for a “Hoax” to be real.
I’m still on the fence, but lean toward .mobi rather than away. I only own one .mobi A single dictionary keyword. I’m waiting to see like the rest of us.
Wow – there are a lot of people backing this. But I guess the next question is one of speed: will mobile technology evolve fast enough that it will render made-for-mobile sites superfluous or will the demand for made-for-mobile sites come before we are even near that level.
Anyway – the talk has got me excited – I just registered my first two .mobis 🙂