WAP and iMode: general pros and cons

reaching the mobile community--six questions for you

[linear]

rogerd's post regarding RSS and its pros and cons got me interested in having a similar discussion around mobile users.

Several forum packages offer templates for mobile formats such as WAP and iMode. 1) Do you use these? 2) Have you found any tangible benefit?

My experience, summarized:
I use a forum software that offers both WAP and iMode templates out of the box. However, with no inbound links to those pages they will not normally be spidered. I created a "how to access the forums won your mobile" post, which had links to every flavor of templates, wap, wap2 and imode, offered by my software.

It seems that single entry point was all that was needed--the referrer logs bear out that my forums are well-indexed and turn up frequently in mobile searches of all sorts, despite only comprising a few thousand posts. I see strong evidence that I get readers this way. I have no evidence that I gather any members this way.

It's tough to monetize this traffic (currently). I would be very interested in your thoughts. 3) Is this really just wasted impressions? I've tried using my own boards on a mobile, and I'm not at all satisfied with the usability of the OOB templates. 4) Is it worth time spent improving them? 5) Can this traffic stream be monetized?

FWIW, my observation is that this (mobile web) may be an area where a webmaster could either realize a first-to-market advantage, or at least enjoy a stint of uncontested serp dominance if you play at it. I can tell you that I've seen my forum rank for some startling keywords/keyphrases with no optimization. Just showing up to the party (getting WAP pages indexed) is enough for now, it seems.

6) When you check your position in the serps, do you check the mobile serps?

[rogerd]

Interesting topic, linear. I can't answer many of your points, but I doubt if these are wasted impressions. I could be wrong, but I'd guess stats would show that most of your mobile people also connect by regular PC more than they do by mobile device. Even if the ad revenue from mobile connections is low now, you are stregthening your community and keeping these people involved. If someone is committed enough to participate in the community by an inconvenient mobile device, what do you think they'll do when they get home? Fire up the PC, of course...

[localguide]

I have a local community forum and also am a die hard Treo user. I have been trying to build a mobile version of my website, as the software that I currently use does not have a mobile version.

I can see cell phone users finding it frustrating, but seeing how many of these Treos are out there, and how easy they are to use, I think this is definitely a growing area.

[rogerd]

I think one demographic effect is that younger people (teens, and recent teens) are far more into text messaging. Once you get in the habit of using a cell phone or PDA for texting, it's not a big leap to forum posting.

[Oldiesmann]

1. Not much, but this is mainly because I could spend hours every day surfing the web from my phone - I get 500kb of data transfer a month, and it's only $0.03/kb after that, but I could easily run up a huge bill if I spent hours browsing the web every day from my phone. Also, my phone doesn't work right with this functionality - I can login and read topics and personal messages, but for some reason I can't post from my phone, although this isn't a problem with the forum system itself...

2. I find it quite useful, and would love to use it more if I could.

3. I don't think so. Even if nobody uses it, it's always nice to get your board out to the mobile community. Since most forum systems don't yet offer this functionality, it may take a while for users to get used to it.

4. I happen to like the default wireless templates. I don't see a problem with changing the colors and overall layout though - just remember that most wireless providers measure bandwidth in kilobytes, so don't go overboard...

5. Unfortunately, probably not. Google ads aren't mobile-friendly, and you're going to have a hard time convincing people to pay for mobile access...

6. No, but this is because my sites are using portals and the portals are not yet mobile-friendly, so I don't think many people are going to be using mobile devices to post when they can't get to most of the site content from their phones.