It is no surprise that there is a mobile content management system (MCMS) especially when you consider the growth in mobile devices such as smartphones and PDA’s. This growth in demand and the increasing sophistication and complexity of these devices has fuelled the need for a content management system which can do all of this.
This type of system manages and delivers content on a wide range of mobile devices which includes mobile phones, PDA’s and smartphones.
The original aim was the business to consumer (B2C) market with its focus on the ubiquity of the mobile phone. The massive surge in demand for these devices plus their increasingly popularity with all types of users led to the development of mobile systems which managed content such as ringtones, text messaging, news and games.
But this has expanded from that into new areas such as business to employee (B2E) and business to business (B2B) in which information is shared in a useful, effective and efficient manner between businesses and corporations.
Types of MCMS
These range from small, unobtrusive systems through to large systems which are capable of multiple information delivery. Some systems exist as a feature or add-on as part of a larger MCMS.
Advantages of a MCMS
These include:
- Specialised set of templates: these are customised to fit the needs of a particular mobile device, for example a smartphone. They have to take the features and limitations of each mobile device into account which means developing a set of templates which will do just that. There are two types of templates: multi-site and multi-client which enable the website to be viewed via a specific sub-domain or all versions of the site are viewable at the same domain. In the latter case, the templates displayed to the user are based upon the type of device which they are using to access the site.
- Targeted content: this means location-specific content such as maps, news and adverts is accessed on a mobile device based upon the user’s location at that time. An example of this is a GPS navigation system which is the most popular location based system but can be integrated with mobile phone technology.
Examples of MCMS include Wap-2-Go, Mofuse and Synapsy.
An important issue is that of usability: an MCMS interface needs to take into account ease of use, readability and navigation in relation to the small size of the screens of mobile devices.
Designing for mobile devices is different from designing for the internet and issues such as screen size, supported/unsupported features by the browser and layout need to be taken into account.