1. W HI T E PA P ER : W EB P ER F O R M A NCE M A N A G EMEN T
MOBILE IS ON THE MOVE. ARE YOU KEEPING UP WITH #5: YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE FROM MARS — BUT YOU’RE
YOUR CUSTOMERS? FROM VENUS
After years of eager anticipation, the mobile revolution is now Do you truly know your mobile customers? Without genuine insight,
truly moving ahead. According to Morgan Stanley, the volume of you might be tempted, for example, to offer mobile users the regular
mobile users will outstrip the number of desktop Internet users by web site that works well with your Internet customers. But most
2014. By 2011, Nielsen expects the U.S. market will own more smartphones and feature phones cannot support the complex,
smartphones — with advanced browsers and connectivity — than high-bandwidth Flash and Ajax applications at the heart of your site.
ordinary “feature” phones. Further, your feature- and content-rich web site can pose numerous
issues regarding usability, navigation or even screen real-estate on
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR BUSINESS? handheld devices.
• Increased revenues: In 2009, eBay posted $600 million in mobile Should you rely on your regular site, offer an optimized mobile web
commerce revenues. Just one year later, the company expects $1.5 site or create a mobile application? To arrive at the right answer —
billion in mobile sales. and craft the most effective solution — you need to know:
• Publisher and developer opportunities: Since its iPhone launch, • What devices do your customers use? BlackBerries? iPhones?
Apple has generated five billion App Store downloads, paying over Droids? Something else?
$1 billion to publishers and developers. • What networks are they on? What speed do they deliver?
• Rapid growth: Within just 100 days, both Marriott and Pizza Hut • What are their usage patterns? Can you anticipate the peaks?
realized more than $1 million in revenues from their respective
mobile web sites, and according to IBM, Black Friday (Friday after • What about locations? Can you deliver consistent performance,
Thanksgiving) traffic to retail web sites increased 50-fold year from Sausalito to Singapore?
over year. • What is their context? Are they waiting on line? In a hurry? At the
airport or in a cab?
But as mobile opportunities increase, so do customer expectations.
Unfortunately, many companies racing ahead with the mobile • Most importantly: Can customers complete key transactions?
revolution are stumbling across a number of obstacles along the While on the move with one free hand in areas with spotty network
way to their goal: a consistent mobile web presence that satisfies connections?
customers and encourages business growth.
Customers are going to access your mobile service in the real world
This paper will address the top five mobile web experience mistakes — their real world. You have to understand what that world is before
you may face on the road to success — and a model for ensuring you offer a mobile web site, application or SMS initiative that can
performance to keep your business in the running. succeed within it.
“In the last 12 months, customers around the world have
ordered more than $1 billion worth of products from
Amazon using a mobile device.”
——Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon
TM

2. #4: YOUR MOBILE CONTENT IS OUT OF SIGHT — AND
OUT OF MIND
As in, your customers can’t find your mobile web sites, applications or
SMS initiatives. And if they can’t find your mobile content or services,
you’ve lost their business.
For starters, this means automated redirects that recognize mobile
users and instantly lead them to the appropriate mobile content.
GOOD VISIBILITY:
Mobile users who search for a leading retailer get
two options: a paid for PPC ad and an organic
listing — both of which lead to the appropriate
mobile optimized web site.
Figure 1: Sponsored and
organic search engine
links redirect an end
user to a mobile
optimized web site.
BAD VISIBILITY:
When iPhone 4 users type www.company-name.com, or
click an organic search listing, they get the full web site of
a leading airline; the automated redirect doesn’t recognize
the “www” prefix and fails to deliver the mobile site.
It’s simple: If you don’t apply technology to ensure easy
access to your mobile content, your mobile users will get
lost — and they will tell your business to do the same.
Figure 2: Sponsored and
organic search engine
links do not redirect to
an existing mobile site,
providing end users a
non-optimized mobile
web-site experience.

3. #3: YOU’RE NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME
It’s just not good enough to be prepared for “ordinary” business
conditions. After all the expense of driving traffic and promoting your
mobile service, you have to be ready for peak traffic conditions when
interest — and expectations — are at their height.
When your mobile site or application is overwhelmed by extraordinary
activity, potential customers face unbearably slow load times and a
very unwelcomed message: “We’re currently experiencing high traffic
volume. As a result, we were not able to process your request. Please
try again.” Will they? Not likely.
CAUTION:
Your mobile site may be powered by a third party, but you’re
responsible for its performance. After all, visitors see your brand
and will hold you accountable, regardless of the underlying vendor
Figure 3: A third-party mobile web site and supporting
arrangement.
infrastructure does not deliver a quality experience to end
users under peak traffic conditions.
#2: YOU’RE FALLING SHORT, WAY SHORT, OF According to a survey of over 1,000 U.S. mobile phone users, 52
EXPECTATIONS percent of consumers are unlikely to return to a web site they had
trouble accessing by phone.
Mobile users expect to make sacrifices – in content depth and its
presentation — in exchange for anyplace, anytime convenience. But Worse, 40 percent said they’d likely visit a competitor’s web site
the one thing they won’t sacrifice is speed: 58 percent of mobile instead.
phone users expect web sites to load as quickly on their phones as on With social media as a readily available bullhorn, disappointed
their desktops. customers are NOT content to suffer silently. Instead, they rapidly
While the desktop user may be content to surf the web, mobile users share their frustrations with millions of other social media users,
typically use their devices for urgent needs, such as checking a flight slamming your brand, your revenues and your ability to encourage app
status, confirming reservations, comparing price options and making adaptation.
appointments. Urgency sets the expectation and if you fail to meet it, While performance issues may be complex, the consequences are
you’ll pay a steep price. simple: There’s an unmistakable correlation between increases in
mobile service load times and increases in end-user abandonment.
Figure 4: Mobile users not only vent their frustrations using
social media but also through mobile-specific channels,
such as App Store customer ratings, significantly impacting Figure 5: There is a clear correlation
mobile service uptake and revenue. between an increase in site load time
and mobile end-user abandonment.

4. #1: YOU DON’T SEE YOUR MOBILE SERVICE FROM YOUR • What do customers want from your mobile service?
CUSTOMERS’ PERSPECTIVE Is your content optimized to perform well on mobile devices
with widely different capabilities, or is it creating unintended
It’s too easy to feel cozy and warm behind the comforts of your frustrations? For example, reducing the number of HTTP requests
firewall where everything from web servers to load balancers seems to or using simple tools to optimize images can have a major,
be running okay. favorable impact on performance.
But that’s NOT how your customers see things at all. The service • Where do customers access your service?
they receive (or don’t) comes at the end of a complex mobile web Does your service perform well regardless of geographic location
application delivery chain that includes major Internet service or network? Remember, in a globally connected world, it’s always
providers (ISPs), third-party services, content delivery networks, local “business hours” somewhere — your service must be strong, 24/7.
ISPs, mobile carriers, mobile devices and more. Problems at any • How do customers use your service?
point in the chain frustrate your customers. Does your mobile site render correctly regardless of device, be it
an iPhone, a Droid or a BlackBerry? Are your third-party partners
As many as two-thirds of all performance failures occur outside the
delivering the service levels they promised, or are they generating
firewall. Yet no matter where the problems arise, the blame — and
performance issues that impact your customers?
the consequences — will fall on you. That’s why you need to ask the
kind of questions that expose your mobile performance the way your
customers experience it:
Figure 6: Problems that impact the mobile user experience can occur anywhere
along the entire mobile application delivery chain.

5. YOUR COMPETITORS’ MOBILE PERFORMANCE INFLUENCES ABOUT GOMEZ
YOUR CUSTOMERS’ EXPECTATIONS.
The Gomez platform is the industry’s leading solution for optimizing
the performance, availability, and quality of web, non-web, mobile,
See what mobile users expect, industry by industry, by reviewing streaming and cloud applications. The Gomez approach to application
Gomez’s free benchmark reports at http://www.gomez.com/benchmarks. performance management starts by measuring your end-user’s
experiences and all the components that contribute to it to proactively
detect performance issues, quantify their business impact and
accelerate resolution. The Gomez solution works for any type of
application, including enterprise applications accessed by employees,
CONCLUSION: e-commerce web sites visited by customers or applications running
ONE WEB, ONE ANSWER, ONE WAY TO MEET YOUR on mobile devices. Only the Gomez “First Mile to Last Mile” solution
CUSTOMERS’ EXPECTATIONS eliminates blind spots across the entire application delivery chain,
from the browser on a user’s computer or mobile device, across the
Since mobile sites and apps often share back-end infrastructure and Internet or a corporate WAN, across third-party and cloud providers,
services with your existing web applications, they should also share to the complex infrastructure inside data centers. Business managers,
the same performance management tools. IT operations personnel and application development/QA engineers
benefit from the insight provided by the Gomez solution. More than
By leveraging established metrics, technologies and best practices,
4,000 customers worldwide, ranging from small companies to large
both your mobile and web channels, and the teams who manage
enterprises and managed service providers, use Gomez to increase
them, can obtain operational efficiencies while resolving specific
revenue, build brand loyalty and decrease costs.
problems anywhere in the application delivery chain, from device to
the data center.
Gomez puts application performance management control in your To learn more about Gomez, visit: www.compuware.com/gomez
hands from one centralized platform. In fact, Gomez can help
you improve performance immediately. To see how your web site
renders across the latest mobile devices running Apple, BlackBerry
and Android OSs, take our free Gomez Cross-Device Web Site
Compatibility Test at Compuware.com.
Compuware Corporation, the technology performance company, provides software, experts and best practices to ensure
technology works well and delivers value. Compuware solutions make the world’s most important technologies perform at their
best for leading organizations worldwide, including 46 of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and 12 of the top 20 most visited
U.S. web sites. Learn more at: compuware.com.
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© 2011 Compuware Corporation
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