WVU's Mobile Site
Description of WVU Mobile Web
The WVU Mobile Web (http://m.wvu.edu/) was designed by University Relations- Web to deliver select campus information and services to any web-capable mobile device like an iPhone, iPod Touch, smartphone, or feature phone. Device detection is used to deliver a design optimized for the mobile device requesting the site.
To view each section online go to http://m.wvu.edu/about
WVU Mobile Web currently provides a mobile interface to the following central campus services:
- Athletic information including schedules
- Campus calendar
- Campus directory
- Campus map
- Campus radio station
- Emergency information including phone numbers and announcements
- Hours that select locations are open
- Links to related mobile information like our mobile libraries website and mobile news website
- Status of our campus transportation system, Personal Rapid Transit (PRT)
Objectives
The following were the objectives for WVU Mobile Web:
1. Provide access to select central campus services like a campus map, campus calendar, and campus directory. 2. Provide access to emergency information on as wide a variety of mobile devices as possible. 3. Use it as a test platform for new mobile technologies
Audience
The primary audience for WVU Mobile Web is our on-campus population of students, faculty, staff, and visitors.
Budget
Aside from staff salaries, there were no additional costs. Staff from University Relations-Web produced this project using existing hardware and software.
Measures of Success
From a usage perspective the only real way to gauge success on mobile is by looking at raw page views. It’s difficult, because of the various capabilities of mobile devices, to accurately tally “visits” to a mobile site.
Since our mobile site launched at the end of August 2009 we have had 840,000+ page views. More importantly, the average page views per semester has been steadily rising, showing a continued and increasing interest in our mobile services. By semester:
- 2009 Fall Semester – 1,536 average page views per day with a maximum of 2,565 page views in one day
- 2010 Spring Semester – 2,386 average page views per day with a maximum of 10,463 page views in one day
- 2010 Fall Semester – 4,690 average page views per day with a maximum of 7,796 page views in one day
During our 2010 fall semester we have seen traffic increase three times compared to the traffic we had when we initially launched our mobile site.
The mobile site was also instrumental in delivering information during a snowstorm we had in February 2010 when we had to close. Between updates delivered automatically through our e2campus emergency system and pushed to our mobile site as well as manual updates we were able to keep the campus up-to-date with the changes in the status. During a normal week preceding the event our emergency section would average 150 page views. During the event the section had 2,100+ page views in a single day and 5,200+ page views for the week. That’s 34 times the normal average for that week.
From the perspective of our campus content partners it’s been helpful in “unlocking” content that had previously not been available online. Before our mobile site there was no way for a member of campus to check the status of our campus transportation system, the PRT. With mobile we were able to show that this type of content could be useful. In the case of the PRT we have now made that content available not only on mobile devices but on the regular transportation website, our campus portal, and Twitter. We have had similar success with our campus dining services unit and are in the process of putting together mobile dining menus.
But probably the greatest measure of success is the positive feedback from our users. As one student wrote on Twitter:
“Am I a dork for loving that there is a WVU mobile page? Probably.”