Mobile websites are becoming increasingly important tools in our clients’ Internet marketing strategies. Just last week we launched a brand new mobile website for Greenwin Property Management. You can visit the website at http://www.greenwinpm.com/mobile. Expect to see more of these announcements as we are in the midst of helping several of our clients create new and exciting mobile experiences for their tenants and prospects.

Some of you may wonder where this seemingly sudden interest in mobile marketing has come from. For a number of years consumers have been able to browse the web from their mobile phones, although they experienced slow connection speeds and limited capabilities, making the experience not terribly exciting! The advent of smart phones, particularly the iPhone, changed all of that.  In 2010 people really started to take notice. Nielsen reported that 45% of recent phone buyers chose smart phones over feature phones[1].

So just what got people excited? Smart phones combined fast Internet access and rich web browsing with touch gestures, motion sensors, digital cameras, GPS, and other hi-tech features. They are now fun to play with and have changed how we work. For us, mobile web design and development is still about figuring out how to present information on small displays, but more importantly, it is now about imagining what these new technologies make possible and creating more engaging experiences for your tenants and prospects than was ever possible.

An example of how things have changed for us, and our clients, is the brand new location-aware search technology we are wrapping up. By using the GPS sensor commonly found in iPhone, Android, and Blackberry smart phones, we have created a new search technology that grabs the user’s location and automatically presents him or her with a list of nearby available apartments. The user can even view the nearby apartments on a map and get directions to an apartment of their choice. We will be rolling this technology out on the Greenwin mobile site so watch for that. We will also be making this technology available to all of our clients in our Q1 (January 2011).

[1] Christina Warren, “Android Nipping at iOS’ Heels in Market Share [STATS]”, Mashable, http://www.mashable.com/2011/01/03/us-smartphone-share-november/, (access. Jan. 5, 2011).