mobilepeople helped Trudon mobilize around a new name and the big game

Business Need

When South African publisher of Yellow and White Page directories www.yellowpages.co.za and 10118 changed its name from Telkom Directory Services to Trudon Pty Limited, the company turned to mobilepeople to help transform its brand in the mobile sector.

To support this branding initiative, Trudon’s plan was to develop and launch a new branded mobile platform in a market where mobile phones outnumber PCs and Internet users. The goal? To establish Trudon as the top mobile information portal in South Africa and to provide mobile advertising options to its customers.

Project and Process

mobilepeople’s role was to build Trudon Mobile, a suite of mobile applications. Trudon Mobile was to be based on mobilepeople’s award-winning Liquid™ Local technology, localized for Trudon and integrated with Trudon’s own search API. The delivery would be in two versions: a Java application (suitable for Blackberries, etc.) and a browser-based version to support most of the devices in South Africa’s widely fragmented mobile market.

Result

In March 2009, the mobile project launched alongside the new Trudon brand. A first for South Africa, Trudon Mobile offers users the ability to conduct yellow pages, city and white pages searches and access fresh, reliable information on their mobile phones—like sports, weather, news, and maps. Users have also embraced the newfound ability to save search results to their phone’s contact lists, send search results to friends, pinpoint their locations on a map, or simply click to call someone.

The success doesn’t stop there—plans are in place to further expand usage through continued local marketing initiatives. Currently, Trudon is gearing up their mobile presence to seize opportunities related to the upcoming FIFA World Cup, set to kickoff in South Africa in 2010.

How mobilepeople enhanced search capabilities for Schibsted’s Sesam

Business Need

Since the mid-90s, Scandinavian media group Schibsted has built a strong reputation in developing strong online news and classified advertising sites. With operations in 20 countries across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, the company has cultivated an impressive media presence across mediums and one some of Scandinavia’s biggest websites (Aftonbladet.se and VG.no, to name a few).

In 2005, Schibsted launched the mobile search service “Sesam” in Norway and later expanded into Sweden in 2006. In the face of rapid growth, Schibsted called on mobilepeople to develop a solution for bringing Sesam to a mobile audience. Their goal was to enable users to perform a complete search service in one easy operation—mobilepeople’s answer was to develop a user-friendly mobile solution with a single search field that could access various types of information, content, and services.

So the slogan was born: "One search - all answers."

Project and Process

An extensive user interface planning and design process followed. The results yielded both a native Java application and mobile browser-based version of Sesam. Users were able to search the spectrum of data sources—from images to news articles to global/local websites to maps. mobilepeople also integrated advanced functionalities like dynamic handling of multiple search indexes, display of most likely results (enrichments), list of relevant suggestions attached to the input field, SVG maps, follow-up actions (click-to-call, save to contacts, send to friend), and billing. To further enhance user experience, more features were later rolled out such as a TV guide, recent news feed, Wikipedia, weather forecast, and mobile entertainment.

Result

In 2007, mobilepeople introduced banners and sponsored links into Sesam’s existing browser-based searches. That year, Sesam was recognized as "Best Mobile Search Engine" among nominees like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, and Kvasir in Norway’s leading online mobile magazine Amobil. By January 2008, more than 30,000 mobile searches per day were being performed on the service and 150,000 users each month were gleaning information via Sesam mobile.