Mobile phone as a second opinion
Editor’s Note: Headlightblog.com recently caught up with James Spahr, a UX Lead at Razorfish and pictured below, who has been working on the Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) account since Razorfish was selected as the digital agency of record in January 2009. This past summer James worked on a mobile website for MBUSA as part of the agency’s work to support the 2010 E-Class launch. He was interviewed for Headlightblog.com by Kyle Outlaw, a regular Headlightblog.com contributor who is also a UX lead at Razorfish and one of the agency’s mobile subject matter experts.
Headlightblog.com: What were the key business drivers behind the creation of the mobile website for MBUSA?
James Spahr: The goal of the mobile website was to create a destination that mobile advertising could ultimately be driven toward. The point was to deliver products and information about the new E-Class, whether you were directed to the site from a mobile ad, accessed the site directly on your mobile phone or, while sitting in front of the TV, saw the URL and typed it in.
This view of James’s desktop displays the prototype he built for the mbusa.com mobile site along with an iPhone and BlackBerry simulator; James is pictured in the iSight window.
The purpose of the mobile site was to give you more information about the E-Class and we decided to create some very mobile-specific functionality and content, including a comparison tool between the E-Class and its primary competitors, and to do it in a way that was highly focused. So, when you compared the E-Class to an Audi of a comparable price and body style, you would see the main differentiators. You wouldn’t really see all the specifications, just the key points of differentiation.
The other piece of functionality was “Find a dealership,” although we didn’t have time or budget to implement any geolocation or the new GPS API; it’s mainly about entering a ZIP code and getting a list of local dealerships.
HBDC: Was the mobile URL displayed in television advertising? Did you create a distinct URL for the site, for example m.mbusa.com?
James: The URL gets redirected based on the user agent so it’s the same URL -– www.mbusa.com — desktop or mobile. The mobile gets directed to a different experience, and the reason why it happens that way is because the Mercedes-Benz site is done entirely in Flash. Prior to the E-Class launch, there was no mobile presence at all.
HBDC: How large is the site page-wise?
James: Roughly a half-dozen templates; probably 40 pages in total. For example, vehicle comparisons were a single page but all one template.
HBDC: How long did it take to develop?
James: It was one week of design, one week of development and another week for QA.
HBDC: So, this was essentially a device-agnostic mobile website? How wide a net did you cast across devices? Or, did you simply target specific smartphones?
James: We targeted smartphones — basically with an html site designed to work on a smaller screen. It was QA-tested on an iPhone and on one or two Blackberry models. The reason why we chose those models was because we had initially looked at stats on what mobile devices were hitting mbusa.com, and iPhone was clearly around the 90 percent mark, followed by an array of Blackberry devices.
HBDC: What Blackberry models did you test?
James: 8800s. We were QAing against Blackberry emulators and the devices we had.
HBDC: Was this built completely in-house?
James: Our tech team was co-located [at Mercedes-Benz USA HQ in N.J. and the Razorfish New York offices].
HBDC: Did you get a sense for how this relates to the experience at a dealership? Did you see this as having direct benefit to dealers?
James: We were well aware that almost 40 percent of traffic on Cars.com is from mobile devices on the dealership. So we know what people are doing. Still a little fuzzy about why they are doing it. It’s assumed that people are doing it to verify information. So, you’re on the dealership lot and the salesperson is your only source of information, which isn’t something necessarily that people trust. So I think people are using the mobile phone as a second opinion and we designed the comparison feature for mobile specifically thinking about that use case. So, if I’m on the BMW lot and I’m also considering the Mercedes-Benz I can pull up the comparisons and say “Well I’m looking at this BMW and now I can see how it compares to a Mercedes-Benz and now I know the types of questions I want to ask the dealer.”
HBDC: Were there any other key user scenarios or use cases you wanted to support with this mobile site?
James: Being able to get somebody to a dealership. For example, when the user requests driving directions we link them off to Google maps and the iPhone just brings them right to the maps application. A similar experience happens on the Blackberry so they are able to get to the native map application using the GPS functionality — if it exists — and get driving directions through there.
HBDC: Did you at any point consider making this a native app for iPhone? Why did you go the mobile web route when Mercedes-Benz demographics seem to support an iPhone app version?
James: There was definitely discussion about that. I’m of the opinion that we did the right thing for a couple of reasons. Having the html site — even if catered to work on the iPhone — just basically means that we get that much more reach to more devices. It means we use existing workflows to update and manage content. An app isn’t necessarily easy to update with content unless you build it that way and then essentially you’re building a lot of infrastructure that you’re getting for free because the web is an environment you already know how to work within. Also, unless you need offline data access or a tremendous amount of speed, or use of the camera, there’s probably no reason to do it as an app. Especially if we are talking about people getting comparison data or finding directions to a dealership — the mobile experience is all dependent on them having the foresight to install the app beforehand. I think it’s a whole lot easier for people just to visit the site.
–Interview conducted by Kyle Outlaw
Image credit:
Desktop screenshot provided by James Spahr; screenshot of the Mercedes-Benz E350 Coupe vs BMW 328i side-by-side comparison on the mbusa.com mobile site appears courtesy of Mercedes-Benz USA.
Posted in MobileSocial media on January 11, 2010
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Tags: james spahr, mercedes-benz, mobile, razorfish, smartphone
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Interesting article - thanks for sharing!
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