Can Buyers Access Your Site By Cell Phone?
If you think that your website can only be accessed by way of computer (desktop or laptop) you aren’t going to be as profitable as you could be because you’re missing new customers and site exposure because your site lacks WAP.
WAP: What is it?
It stands for Wireless Application Protocol and it enables you to broadcast your website, and virtually any other digital data, via any wireless application – today, primarily the cell phone. Now, the cell phone you remember from your teen years is long gone. Today, users can watch entire movies on their cells, though you gotta think that Gone With The Wind might lose something on a two-inch cell phone screen. However, most cell phones are WAP-enabled right out of the box so it’s the norm, not the dream of the future.
Let Your Site Go Live
First recognize that it’s pretty easy to WAP if you’ve got an up-to-date web host. The cell phone user simply selects the WAP option on her handset. That provides instant, mobile access to the world wide web.
Next, enter the URL you want to see – anything from the latest from Eddie Bauer to unusual piercings for the biker crowd. If it’s on the web (and it is) you can access the site from your Blackberry, cell phone – any mobile communication device.
The fact is, WAP delivers live information. Sometimes it’s service information like a tornado warning and sometimes it’s news on the latest sales at the mall. It’s a lot cheaper and much more effective than text messaging your client base, though its true that a lot of
WAPPERS will skip right over your message if it smells like spam.
Think of it this way – it’s another means to get you site in front of your market – young, tech savvy folks who WAP daily and text message friends about interesting sites (yours?). It’s a mini-marketing network but it’s growing as fast as the cell phone industry and we all know how that’s done in the past 10 years. Five-year-olds have their own cell phones today.
What technology do I need?
Depends what your plans are. There are lots of online companies that will deliver feeds to your WAP line. The content is free, a good web host won’t fuss about it because it stays green for 60 seconds and is dumped before moving on to the next big thing. You’ll gain WAP creds as your site is bookmarked by more cell phones users. Most wireless networks support WAP including DataTAC, CDPD, iDEN, FLEX and others. And, WAP is supported by all operating systems which means you can broadcast content from any platform to any platform as long as both use a common wireless network.
As most readers know, web sites are built using HTML (hyper text markup language) or XML (extensible markup language) and while most wireless devices support these most popular on-line formats, smart phones and other wireless devices also uses WML which has been created specifically for wireless applications. Because cells have very little memory capacity and low-bandwidth, WML removes a lot of the W3 protocols used for site building. Make sure your web host is WAPable before signing a two-year contract.
There’s no additional equipment to buy. If you can post it on your web site, you can post it on any smart phone, handheld wireless device (Blackberry), pagers and other wireless communications devices such as two-way radios.
How Can I Use It To Help My Site?
There are plenty of sites that provide content that’s WAP-ready on a variety of topics including top stories of the moment, entertainment news, financial news, technology, sports, business and more.
Other, more site-specific capabilities? OK, how about broadcasting your site’s blog. This is especially useful if you have an active blogging community with long threads. Your wireless users won’t feel left out away from their desktops.
If your site is topic specific, add WAP-ready, RSS (remote site syndication or really simple syndication) feeds for broadcast to smart phones and wireless networks. This means that, using an RSS aggregator (free download) to collect feeds of interest to your customer base, you can collect all the news related to the topic for distribution via wireless devices. For example, if your site is based on exercise and good health, you can deliver recipes, exercises, personal safety tips and other information that will keep your customers in touch – with you.
WAP at Work
It’s not all fun and games, funny ringbones and dancing, happy feet. Many large companies have also discovered the value of WAP apps for both general broadcast and in-house use. Just to get an idea of companies using WAP tech to advertise to customers or to keep staff up-to-date on company happenings, visit moreover.com for a listing of general WAP categories as well as categories that focus on the news out of a single company.
On this day, moreover.com was offering health topics on everything from cancer to genetics in the science category. In sports, content is divided by game: basketball, football, cricket (that’s right, cricket), cycling and more. In the lifestyles section, you can target your perfect buyer with incredible specificity using WAP-ready content. Parenting, health, men’s health, senior citizens, homeopathy – you name it and you’ll find feeds for it.
Just a Passing Fancy?
Hardly. Mobile technology is growing exponentially with a tech savvy consumer base demanding more and more from their wireless products.
To this end, both wireless hardware and software continue to integrate WAP into the technology matrix that has become such a part of our daily lives. Currently available, you’ll find cells that are Java-enabled, eliminating the need to translate web data to WAP data so cell phone users get news faster.
Flash Lite is making strides in delivering Flash animations, videos and other Flash content to that 2-inch cell screen. Even entire new operating systems (Symbian OS) are being installed into the latest cell phones. And there are even entire wireless networks of content including My Yahoo, Windows Live Alerts, Newsburst, Pluck and My AOL. And more of these networks are coming to market all the time so that cell phone users can have more expansive coverage of topics of interest to them.
What’s It All Mean to the Success of Your Site?
If you’re not broadcasting WAP content, you aren’t making full use of your site as a marketing or informational resource. Being able to shop your site while riding the bus to work will boost sales. And finding the one piece of information just before that important meeting will cause that user to bookmark your site’s RSS feeds.
Bottom line? WAP just provides one more, low-cost way to keep your company and its products or services before the eyes of your client base, regardless of where those clients are. Just a few years ago, your customers had to be sitting at a desktop or lap top to access data from your site. Now all they need are smart phones, which are getting smarter all of the time.
You extend the reach of your site beyond the limits of a 17-inch monitor in the spare room and go global with your products, services, company message and, yes, funny ringbones and dancing, cartoon feet.
Look at it this way. Chances are your main competitors are already using WAP technology to their advantage, leaving you coughing in the dust. If your site and web host aren’t WAP ready, if you aren’t delivering RSS feeds from your site and, subsequently, to WAP-ready mobile devices, you’re missing one of the greatest marketing and community building opportunities to come along since some brainiac thought a world wide web might be a good idea.
You’ve got the content already on your site so it’s not like you have to start over from scratch. Whatever you want to say is already on-line. With a bit of technology (not PhD technology) you can broadcast everything on your site to your loyal customer base using WAP technology and hardware.
It’s there. And it’s growing. And if you don’t get on board now, you’re going to be running double-time to catch up with the competition. So, if you don’t know WAP from Whoop-de-do, call a techie and get yourself out there where your customers are. And if you do know about RSS aggregators and publishers, WAP-based protocols and other tech talk, what in the world are you waiting for?
Your customers are hungry for news from your site and WAP will deliver it so that you can actually take orders over cell phones, expanding your selling opportunities well beyond land-based technology.
So go wireless and watch your sales grow. It’s low cost and low tech. Any site owner can use it and upgrade content regularly. Check out Wireless Application Protocol for yourself to see what you and your best customers have been missing.
You’re going to wonder how you ever got along without it.
