IKEA in the palm of your hand – it’s like a dream come true! Or is it?  Find out how IKEA’s mobile website measures up in this more technical review (see also:  IKEA Mobile: Sale, Event & Contest Info in the Palm of Your Hand) of the new IKEA site for the mobile web.

As far as I can tell, the mobile site is not yet officially launched – you heard it here first! IKEA US quietly began testing on m.IKEA.us in late August, 2009. Previously all links for ‘mobile viewing’ were links to simple text pages (see right) which are not very functional or practical, especially given the recent proliferation of mobile-ready sites and smartphone apps, such as the recently released SwedeShop: An Unofficial IKEA Shopping Application for the iPhone.

We’re going to be tracking the progress and growth of the IKEA Mobile site here in the US as it develops beyond its current state of infancy.  We’ll start by documenting and reviewing the site as of now using the following measures:

• XHTML Validation – Validation against established web standards according to w3c.org – the world wide web consortium which has developed the standards and guidelines that dictate how web browsers should interpret code and how web pages are written.
• Mobile Readiness – Mobile readiness according to ready.mobi.  This site checks for compliance with industry standards for mobile display and functionality.  It measures site speed, estimated costs and size of pages against accepted best practices.
• Traffic Statistics – Traffic statistics according to Quantcast.com – a site which offers web analytics, site traffic data and demographics.

Emulation – Also, just for fun, we’ll take a look at what the site looks like on web-based mobile emulators for various smartphones and mobile devices. We used testiphone.com and ready.mobi to view the site on an iPhone simulator and emulators for cellphones by Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sharp. We were unable to locate a functional Blackberry or Palm emulator, but we’d love to hear your reviews of this site on your Blackberry or Palm!

So, without further ado, here we go…

XHTML Validation

Are XHTML validation errors the cause of visualization failures? While the Samsung z105, the Sharp GX-10 and the Motorola v3i successfully achieve proper visualization through ready.mobi and therefore, theoretically would display on these phones, ready.mobi indicates several areas of concern with validation.  According to its evaluation, the IKEA Mobile site:

1. Does not validate against XHTML Basic 1.1 (FAIL)

2. Does not validate against XHTML Mobile Profile 1.2 (FAIL)

3. Does not validate against stated doctype (WARN)

Simple, easy to fix validation errors (4 basic validation errors are reported at w3c.org) may be causing failures in other phones, such as the Nokia and Sony Ericsson.  Invalid markup can cause cellular phone displays to present data incorrectly, inefficiently or on older model phones the intended display may not render at all.

MIME type and doctype errors can lead to inaccurate display or rendering failures as well.

Mobile Readiness

Overall, IKEA’s mobile site passes most of the compliance tests and despite 5 fails and 2 warnings, it achieves a rating of 4 out of 5 on the ready.mobi mobile readiness evaluator. Not too bad, considering shopping behemoth Amazon.com rates only a 3 with the discouraging comment, “It will possibly display poorly on a mobile phone.” Gah!

As you can see below, the IKEA mobile site displays nicely and as intended on the iPhone in either orientation. I was able to navigate easily throughout the mobile site on the iPhone simulator site, testiphone.com and ran into no display problems, errors or issues. 

Traffic Statistics

IKEA’s mobile web site, m.IKEA.us has been online in the US for a little over a month, but since it’s not being publicized as yet by IKEA, it is getting a mere 2.7K visitors per month, according to Quantcast.com’s stats. Quantcast first tracked rough estimates for the site on August 25th, 2009 and gives it a rank equivalent of 373,377.  For comparison’s sake, IKEA-USA.com gets 706K monthly people and ranks at 2,331.

It will be interesting to see how much traffic the site gets as it becomes more widely publicized and more features are put in place.

Help IKEA Build a Mobile Web for YOU

We’re also asking for your opinions on what features and functionalities you’d like to see IKEA build in to the mobile site as well as any future applications for the iPhone or other smartphones.  Blackberry, anyone? Palm Pre? What mobile devices do you use, and what would you like to see IKEA develop for?  Take our poll (Look right →).

We don’t have direct influence over what IKEA chooses to do, but you can believe that we are the audience they are looking to when making their development decisions.

Let’s turn turn the tables and give IKEA instructions on how to build the IKEA mobile web for us!

Tags: IKEA Mobile, iPhone, m.IKEA.us, Nokia, Quantcast.com, ready.mobi, smartphone, Sony Ericsson, w3c.org

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 9:44 AM by Susan and is filed under IKEA Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.