Nokia's Ovi content store
Like many, we eagerly awaited the new Nokia Ovi store to see what was available and how easy it was to buy paid-for apps.
The store did seem to be packed with free apps, mostly in the entertainment genre which is not surprising given Nokia’s penetration of the mass market. Business Week commented this week that there are few business apps but not doubt this will rapidly change developers flock to this new platform.
We liked the Flipsilent app that make the phone silent when you placed it face down. Neat! I’d recommend a browse, there’s some great content there.
Why do I have to login to buy content?
So what was the payment experience? Well, there’s no doubt that this is an area which Nokia will rapidly improve but it’s not up to scratch. We accessed the Ovi store on a Nokia N95 in the UK on the Vodafone network.
I want to buy the Handy Converter app for £6.00, so how do I pay? Can I just click to confirm a Payforit Transaction? Er, No. There’s no quick, single click payment experience as all Bango powered sites have in the UK, USA, Germany, etc.
First I need to log into the Ovi store. Why put barriers in the way of people paying for your content? Then I get sent back to the app page to confirm again that I want to buy.
Paying with my credit/debit card
Then I enter my credit card details to pay, choosing between Visa, DinersClub and American Express . But what about my Mastercard – the most popular card type. I gave up at that point. Disappointing, because the Nokia price is 20% less than almost anywhere else.
As Nokia has already commented, conversion rates are much higher when you provide single click on-bill so we eagerly await this.
Here’s what George Linardos, Nokia’s VP of product management said:
“When we start locally with credit card billing and then we move to operator billing, we see a 70 percent lift in sales literally over night.”
Paying on the phone bill needs to be a seamless, mobile web experience where the user is automatically recognized and there’s no need to send a text message to put a charge on the phone bill. That’s what Bango does for millions of mobile content purchases every month.
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