How to encourage users to bookmark your mobile site

So we've done a couple of posts here about how to market and promote your mobile site for example:

12 ways to promote your mobile site 

and

7 viral marketing tactics for mobile internet sites

The problem is that once you have got people into your mobile site it can be difficult to keep them coming back as mobile bookmarking is not exactly user-friendly, plus, you can't always see the URL of the site while you are browsing on mobile.  Anyway I just noticed a couple of big mobile sites using quite a nice way of getting people to bookmark something on mobile more easily - contact/ VCF cards which load into your phone address book and record the URL.   

Flirtomatic Example

Flirtomatic have a bookmark prompt in the bottom right of the home page:

After you click it they prompt you do download the business card and explain how to use it. 

 

Itsmy.com example

Itsmy.com use exactly the same system - the bookmark prompt is on the bottom of the homepage and takes you directly to a business card download.

 

Here is what you download - its the same for Flirtomatic.

 

Not a bad little trick is it?  It is great to see some of the problems with mobile being ironed out as we get big players like Flirto and Itsmy investing in usability research and product development. 

You can find Flirtomatic and wap.itsmy.com on mjelly our directory of mobile sites and free mobile applications

Comments

[Mariana Oliveira]

Nice tips, j! But i still think it's too complicated for people who isn't familiarized... In a mkt campaign (i know, totally different situation!) is much better to send a link via SMS...