We are now just one week away from the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards ceremony, and today, we continue our preview of the event with a look at the contenders in the Most Effective Mobile Site category.
First up is Copa Airlines and NCR for the Copa Airlines mobile site. This is a good-looking site on which travellers can check timetables and flight status and check-in for their flight. Following mobile check-in, passengers receive a web link taking them to an IATA-standard 2D boarding pass. Nice.
The next contender is Furniture Village and We Love Mobile for the Furniture Village mobile site. This is a fully transactional site offering accordion browsing, which enables users to drill down into product categories without the need to refresh the page. Once you arrive at the product pages, you get a photograph and brief description, with a link to read more. And where a product is available in more than one colour, you get the option of seeing it in the alternative colour choices. The site now accounts for more than 20 per cent of Furniture Village’s online traffic.
Hotels.com is nominated for its mobile- and tablet-optimised sites. Both offer a simple, intuitive user experience, making it easy to find a hotel in just about any city in the world in just a few clicks. Traffic and revenue figures from the sites are confidential, but hugely impressive.
The fourth contender is Macmillan Cancer Support and bemoko for the redesigned Macmillan mobile site, which offers a new design, user experience and page flow. The site delivers rapid load times and fast, intuitive navigation. bemoko’s platform detects the type of device being used to access the site, and configures the individual elements, user flows and preferences, before compressing the data and sending it to the phone or tablet.
Mercedes-Benz and Sevenval are nominated for the Mercedez Brand Portal & COMMAND Portal. The Brand Portal features a product library, car configurator, dealer locator, Mercedes-Benz TV and new and approved used car finder.
The COMMAND Portal is built into Mercedes-Benz’s in-car navigation system. It enables users to connect their mobile phone to the system via Bluetooth to act as a modem and provide instant access to the internet. 
Next up is Obergine for the White Scar Cave mobile site. This is a great-looking site to promote the Yorkshire Dales attraction. It’s easy to navigate and offers information on things to see at the site, opening times, prices, and how to get there. While many major companies have yet to develop a presence on mobile, this is a great example of an independent attraction doing so with great style.
The final nominee is Pizza Hut and bemoko for the Pizza Hut Delivery mobile site. The site offers all the functionality of Pizza Hut’s desktop site, including all pizza deals, combinations and voucher codes, as well as a sign-in for frequent users. Customers can choose from delivery or collection, and can pay by credit card or cash on delivery, or at the point of collection.
Seven strong contenders then, but which one will win. All will be revealed at the Awards Ceremony, which takes place on 29 November at the London Film Museum on the site of County Hall on South Bank, a stones throw from the London Eye.
The event is almost sold out, but there are still a few places left. To book, contact Lisa Slavin by email or telephone +44 (0) 20 7183 5285. Individual seats cost £250; a table of 10 costs £2,150.
The 2012 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards are sponsored by Openmarket, 7Digital, Celtra and Propel. To find out more about how to get your business or brand involved, contact John Owen by email or telephone on +44 (0) 77696 74824.
