Surprise! People Feel Advertising and Voice Improve Mobile Search
by Nancy Broden
Scott Weiss’ Usable Products Company today released the results of their independent user experience benchmark on mobile search. Four mobile search solutions - 3 text-based and 1 voice-based - were tested with 80 participants: InfoSpace WAP, JumpTap Java (Alltel Axcess Search), Nuance Voice Control and Yahoo! Go. The results surprised Weiss and his researchers, no doubt because advertising is generally perceived as an unavoidable evil in a Web-based experience and voice-based search offerings have had mixed results in the marketplace up to date:
Researchers were surprised that 79% of participants favored advertising-supported mobile search, and 37% felt that banner ads actually enhanced the mobile search experience…
Also unexpected was that participants initially predicted voice search would be the most difficult to use but after an hour of usage gave it higher ratings than text search. [Weiss remarked], ‘Users predicted voice search would be the worst of the four search products, but in final usability, it performed much better than expected. We were surprised that participants enjoyed voice search, and how much more they liked it than search via phone keypad.’”
Despite these findings, the overall success rate in finding relevant results was a mere 53% and none of the search solutions tested proved the clear winner.
Unlike Weiss, I am not surprised by the results of his study. Voice is the logical solution for mobile search, given how clumsy most of us are on the keypad of our handsets. There are many players entering the market but Nuance’s technology has taken the lead, underpinning many mobile voice-based startups. Since it is best-of-breed in the field, it is not surprising that Weiss’ participants enjoyed using it to perform mobile searches.
As for advertising, the results do appear to fly in the face of common sense. Given the focused, task-oriented nature of mobile phone usage one would expect the presence of advertising to be more of an annoyance than in a Web-based context. But the mobile context allows for more precise targeting since much more data is available about the individual, including their location which is usually the most pertinent piece of information when on the go. Advertising becomes relevant, and when it’s relevant it isn’t a annoyance - it’s an improvement.
Weiss’ findings bode well for voice- and advertising-based offerings coming to market, such as the advertising-funded mobile virtual network operator Blyk, whose business proposition I wrote about back in May.
