Major Brands Going iPhone

Over the past month, the majority of the time I spend commuting to work I’ve use my iPhone to check up on the daily ads in the major car sales and dealership websites (I have been looking to purchase a car you see).

Surprisingly the there are a fair few sites that have mobile versions for the viewing pleasure for those on the go. I would like to thank carsales and trading post for minimising my pinching and finger spreading thanks to a well designed iphone ready site. 

It was then I started noticing that lot of other major brands have been pushing their own mobile pages and custom applications for the iPhone audience, namely sites that come into the decision process of a major purchase like vehicle, property and banking.

Applications and mobile pages like:

• Domain
• CommBank
• ANZ
• Honda iShowroom
• eBay

There were some applications that really distinguish themselves from the rest, providing a wow factor like the Honda iShowroom.

The application made use of the built in Google maps on the iPhone and can automatically plot a course from your current location to a dealership of your choice. The showroom feature is the main attraction with images and specifications of cars manufactured by Honda. The wow kicks in when the phone is turned and viewed from a landscape layout where the user is presented with a rotatable 3D model of the selected car available with a pallet of interchangeable colours.

So some questions you have to ask as a business are:

• Does my site have an iphone/mobile audience?
• Does my site have content that is attractive for mobile users?
• Is it a profitable investment to create a mobile friendly site or application 

If you have Google analytics running on your site iphone visitors can be easily checked through the default segments options in the top right drop down dropdown.

Checking for other mobile sources can be done by looking at the Browser and OS user agent within the Visitors > Browser Capabilities section.

If you do discover there is a potential iPhone audience to expand into maybe it's time to have a chat with your marketing and development team to discuss application or mobile page options

Wiliam also has a new iPhone application in the works so stayed tuned for more updates.