Jun 28 2007
How Compliant are our Mobile Websites?
Earlier this month I wrote about my frustration in trying to find mobile websites for the Australian Audience. I highlighted around 60 sites that I had found that might be of interest. Spurred on by a couple of recent comments on that post, I thought that I would do the exercise of running each website through a couple of different “mobile readiness” test sites available on the internet.
I was truly surprised at the results. It certainly seems that some of the smaller businesses have done a much better job at adapting or creating websites for mobile use than many of the larger firms – those with large budgets and those you would think would be on the cutting edge of development in this area.
The Mobile Readiness Sites
I’m not sure of the underlying tests performed, but Bango (a mobile content provider) provides a facility whereby you can test any URL to see if it is a mobile site and it provides a score out of 5.
Ready.mobi uses industry standard tests developed with the W3C and leading mobility companies. Ready.mobi provides an analysis of how your web content is likely to function on a mobile device.
Many tests performed by ready.mobi are defined by the W3C in the MobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 document.
Ready.mobi provides an overall score (out of 5), a .mobi readiness score (out of 5), the homepage size, approximate cost, time to download (the homepage), and passes the URL through a number of tests (around 26).
The Methodology
I have taken the scores from Ready.mobi and Bango, factored in a weighting for time, size and cost, and the number of tests passed, warnings and fails to rank the websites originally included in my post. This produced an overall score out of a maximum of 100.
When viewing these results, please bear in mind that these reflect the performance of the home page only. Underlying functionality of the mobile site might work better or worse than that of the home page. Consideration should also be given to the number of steps a user needs to go through, and the speed of processing on subsequent pages.
Those at the bottom of the list were unable to be tested. They either produced the message below, caused the test to hang, or were listed as “not available”.
Your markup is not supported by the ready.mobi report tool. Ready.mobi is designed to test (X)HTML pages, and results for other markup languages may not be meaningful. Markup language identified as WML
Mobile Readiness Scores
| Rank | Website | Category | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | http://mini.opera.com/ | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 94.00 |
| 1 | http://www.google.com.au/gmm | Travel/Mapping/Transport | 94.00 |
| 3 | http://wapedia.mobi/ | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 93.00 |
| 4 | http://my247.mobi | Lifestyle / Entertainment | 90.00 |
| 5 | http://buxton.mobi | Shopping | 89.00 |
| 6 | http://dlook.mobi | Local Business Search | 87.00 |
| 7 | http://egrants.mobi | Miscellaneous | 86.62 |
| 8 | http://melbourneit.mobi | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 81.62 |
| 9 | http://erwingroen.mobi/ | Miscellaneous | 80.76 |
| 10 | http://wap.spraci.com | Lifestyle / Entertainment | 75.36 |
| 11 | http://dir.mobi | Reference / Information | 74.60 |
| 12 | http://ericsson.mobi | Mobile Phone Sites / Providers etc | 74.42 |
| 13 | http://au.mobile.yahoo.com | Search | 73.50 |
| 14 | http://giggle.mobi | Lifestyle / Entertainment | 72.42 |
| 15 | http://three.mobi | Mobile Phone Sites / Providers etc | 67.74 |
| 16 | http://wap.yellow.com.au | Local Business Search | 67.36 |
| 17 | http://mobile.lastminute.com/do/mobile/index?locale=en_AU | Travel/Mapping/Transport | 64.36 |
| 18 | http://gsmworld.mobi | Mobile Phone Sites / Providers etc | 64.24 |
| 19 | http://vodafone.mobi | Mobile Phone Sites / Providers etc | 61.34 |
| 20 | http://nokia.mobi | Mobile Phone Sites / Providers etc | 60.22 |
| 21 | http://ski.com.au/wap | Sport | 59.96 |
| 22 | http://wap.whereis.com.au/ | Travel/Mapping/Transport | 56.26 |
| 23 | http://mobile.live.com/ | Search | 56.06 |
| 24 | http://mobile.131500.com.au/ | Travel/Mapping/Transport | 55.84 |
| 25 | http://mobile.redbook.com.au/ | Reference / Information | 54.22 |
| 26 | http://mobile.tradingpost.com.au/ | Shopping | 53.90 |
| 27 | http://wap.sensis.com.au | Search | 51.26 |
| 28 | http://bitdefender.mobi/ | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 50.92 |
| 29 | http://i-mode.realestate.com.au/ | Shopping | 50.62 |
| 30 | http://bmw.mobi | Shopping | 49.00 |
| 31 | http://jp.translink.com.au/mobile | Travel/Mapping/Transport | 47.76 |
| 32 | http://slashdot.org/palm | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 47.64 |
| 33 | http://www.news.com.au/wireless/ | News | 42.76 |
| 33 | http://t.sportsflash.com.au/wap2 | Sport | 42.76 |
| 35 | http://businessweek.mobi | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 42.72 |
| 36 | http://mobile.wunderground.com/ | News | 42.70 |
| 37 | http://www.qantas.com.au/pda | Travel/Mapping/Transport | 41.68 |
| 38 | http://hvuc.mobi/ | Miscellaneous | 40.60 |
| 39 | http://foxsports.news.com.au/wireless | Sport | 37.72 |
| 40 | http://bloglines.com/mobile/ | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 37.68 |
| 41 | http://m.technorati.com/ | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 35.78 |
| 42 | http://ralph.mobi | Lifestyle / Entertainment | 30.28 |
| 43 | http://xhtml.wcities.com | Lifestyle / Entertainment | 28.86 |
| 44 | http://webstop.mobi | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 27.04 |
| 45 | http://pda.sky.com/sports | Sport | 26.06 |
| 46 | http://www.mcity.com.au/mobile | Lifestyle / Entertainment | 24.94 |
| 47 | http://www.smh.com.au/handheld/ | News | 23.76 |
| 48 | http://www.theage.com.au/handheld/ | News | 23.76 |
| 49 | http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/wireless/ | News | 21.52 |
| 50 | http://mobile.ninemsn.com.au/mobile/homepage/ | Search | 20.58 |
| 51 | http://carsguide.mobi | Shopping | 17.86 |
| 52 | http://ttr.mobi/index.html | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | 17.10 |
| 53 | http://wap.esato.com/ | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | -3.28 |
| 54 | http://google.com.au/mobile | Search | -6.00 |
| http://wap.telstra.com/wap/ | Search | ||
| http://www.abc.net.au/wap/telstra/ | News | ||
| http://mobile.mycareer.com.au/ | Reference / Information | ||
| http://www.gnomon.com.au/mobile/ | Technology / Geek / blog / overseas | ||
| http://blocklayer.mobi/ | Miscellaneous | ||
| http://flowersallhours.mobi | Shopping | ||
| http://sonyericsson.mobi | Mobile Phone Sites / Providers etc |
5 Responses to “How Compliant are our Mobile Websites?”
Interesting,
I didn’t realise that WML was already declared ‘dead’ that way. (not included in MobileOK Basic Tests 1.0)
Still, it’s slightly misleading to include those sites at the bottom of your list, as it sends out the wrong impression. You should make clearer that your study is limited to XHTML.
In my (old school) opinion, as long as mobiles can render WML, a well developed WAP/WML site is just as compliant as a well developed XHTML mobile site.
Daniel
If a website is going to call itself a wap, mobile, mobi, handheld, m or pda site then isn’t it aiming at mobile phone users?
And if it is, shouldn’t it be measured by a standard which measures all mobile sites equally.
Try these sites on your own mobile Daniel (assuming it’s wap enabled). You will see that the sites at the top of the table perform much better than the ones at the bottom. They did on my n70 at least.
Daniel
I do point out “Those at the bottom of the list were unable to be tested. They either produced the message below, caused the test to hang, or were listed as “not available”.
“Your markup is not supported by the ready.mobi report tool. Ready.mobi is designed to test (X)HTML pages, and results for other markup languages may not be meaningful. Markup language identified as WML”
These sites may well function properly, but I was unable to include them in the analysis.
Meg, I know you did. That’s how I found out about WML was left out of the tests.
My only point there was that those which did return that message should have been left out of the table, rather than included at the bottom.
But this is not really your fault. It’s W3C’s fault because they should have known better than leave WML out of the compliance tests.
Hi Daniel
I see your point. I guess as I was referring to my original list, then it would be hard to exclude them without comment.
I’m certainly not an expert when it comes to these type of compliance tests, and obviously had to rely on the (qualified) external sources for the data.
I appreciate that you say it’s really not my “fault” – don’t shoot the messenger and all.