The plague of Premium SMS, apart from the current spate of law suits in America, is the high refund levels experienced by content providers. This has been a necessary evil when there wasn’t another way to buy digital content on the mobile phone but now there is an alternative!
This alternative is WAP billing where consumers buy content on the mobile web. They choose to buy content and then pay in one seamless internet session so there is little room for error compared to the two-step Premium SMS process.
Because the point of payment and download on the mobile web is tightly coupled into one seamless WAP flow, there are fewer support problems with refund levels as low as 0.1% of all downloads, according to Bango’s analysis of mobile web transactions. This compares to levels approaching 10-20% where content is purchased with Premium SMS (source: industry research firm iGillot).
Using the mobile web, consumers can purchase and download a variety of digital content as easily as they do on the PC internet. Many brands are realizing that by integrating the promotion of the mobile service with the rest of the mainstream marketing, it is true that “if you build it – they will come!”
The mobile web experience is clearer
Because the point of payment and download on the mobile web is tightly coupled into one seamless WAP flow, there are fewer support problems with refund levels as low as 0.1% of all downloads, according to Bango’s analysis of mobile web transactions. This compares to levels approaching 10-20% where content is purchased with Premium SMS (source: industry research firm iGillot).
Using the mobile web, consumers can purchase and download a variety of digital content as easily as they do on the PC internet. Many brands are realizing that by integrating the promotion of the mobile service with the rest of the mainstream marketing, it is true that “if you build it – they will come!”
