Yell.com lost in mobile search

Yesterday I found a really fantastic bus shelter ad promoting Yell.com and their new mobile search tool. And - being the good early adopter in mobile I decided that I'd give it a go.

However, I didn't get very far. The application doesn't work on my phone - a Nokia N73.

This was truly amazing - and not in a good way.

I would like to take the product manager at yell.com off to one side and ask him a few questions. I'll bet you he doesn't have answers to all of these.

• What describes the type of consumer yell.com is trying to reach with this application?


• What type of phone do they have?


• How do you think the application will be used?


• How easy is it for the consumer to use the application?
  -- AND --
  


• How do you expect to make revenue from this?


• What are you doing for analytics and performance measurement?


• Where is the complete list of supported ( and tested ) devices?
  

Who will use a mobile yellow pages application?

The type of people who will use yell.com for mobile search are those who have company phones where they don't pay for data charges or have some form of unlimited mobile data in the phone package. Regular consumers don't use mobile data at all.

At the moment operators are discouraging mobile data use through restrictive pricing.

Now - if you have a corporate phone you most likely have a Symbian (like the N73) or Windows ME type phone. I don't know if this application works on Windows ME or not. I am guessing (and it is just a guess as I didn't get the application downloaded) that the application is probably a little Java application. (But even that should have been suitable for download on my phone!)

Another point about these tiny applications - whether search applications or any other - there has to be a very simple user interface or the application is better suited for a PDA device. People will get frustrated trying to type in the name of the business or even the type of business they are looking for. And face it, no matter what menu system you put on a yell.com application people are going to use the service (at least initially) in the way they use the big yellow book. They'll look for something by business type - it will be the wrong type and they will be directed to some other relatively obscure and seemingly unrelated business (Try looking for cabs in the Yellow pages)

Mobile Search in General

I've never been a believer in mobile search.

Just because Google is doing something with mobile search doesn't mean that it is going to take off.

There are some major issues that are probably good for a separate post - but just to sum up:

Internet search makes money by selling advertising on the page with the search results - right?

• When the screen size is somewhere around 3cm square - you just don't have enough real estate to include a bunch of extra information.


• The ability to navigate around these pages is not easy and sometimes just plain non-intuitive depending on your device. Mobile phones don't have a mouse and unless you have a PDA they don't even have a touch screen.


• This also means that it is hard to click-through on any advertising you do see. Ultimately you see what you want and you struggle just to click on that one link. (Which - by they way - typically takes you to a website that is not WAP enabled )

This means that it is going to be very difficult to make money from mobile search through advertising. And if not through advertising then what? And please don't say subscriptions.

And as for Location, Location Location

I've been around the technology needed for mobile phone location for years - and there are so many technical, legislative and business hurdles to making a consumer's physical location available to marketers and application providers that it doesn't look like location will be widely implemented by operators for at least another 2+ years (at least). I know that it has already been rolled out in trials in a few operators - but not widely.

Mobile Search -- for the moment I think everyone is still VERY lost.