Overview of key patterns and behaviours of mobile users in Southern Africa

1. Designing Mobile User Experiences
Insights & paradigms from Southern Africa
By Helga Letowt-Vorbek
June 2012

2. Mantaray is a User Experience Consultancy based in Johannesburg.
Our team:
8 consultants
Key services:
Product strategy
Product visualisation
User experience design
Usability research
Key specialisation:
Mobile content channels
Our company focus on the creation of digital products that meet the
customers' needs and objectives for the African market.

3. South Africa at a glance
Population 50.6 million
Illegal immigrants 5 million
Tax payers 6 million
Official languages 11
Unofficial 8
Most of the population speak
more than one language. Many
speak more than 2 languages.
Gauteng contribute 33.9% of the
South African GDP and 10% of
Africa’s GDP.

4. The computer is not the 1st learnt-behaviour when browsing the internet.
5 million
23 million
The 1st learnt-behaviour with internet browsing is on the mobile phone.

5. The mobile phone has become essential not only for making and receiving
calls, but also for texting and gaining internet access with most users being
feature-orientated.

6. The adoption and consumption of content via mobile is prolific.
Email Entertainment Music Games Radio
Twitter Mxit Facebook News Banking
MMS Sport Reference Fun Youtube
Social networking sites has seen a significant increase throughout Africa in
the last year.

7. Mxit has enabled customers to be in touch constantly with friends and family
sharing and chatting in a very inexpensive manner.

8. Africa as a whole has 230 million unbanked households, roughly 75% of the
adult population. In South Africa 60% of the population is unbanked.
This had led to various methods to enable banking
with a very strong focus on the mobile platform:
• Mobile money wallets: sending money to other
mobiles (MTN Mobile Money, M-pesa Kenya) –
unbanked to unbanked
• Sending money via the mobile to various vendors:
ATMs, Kiosks, shops and agents (Absa
CashSend, M-pesa South Africa, FNB Send Money)
– banked to unbanked
Mobile banking takes place on various channels not
just Mobile Internet with USSD and WIG playing a
significant role.

9. We have 4 content channels on the mobile phone:
WIG - menu on USSD –short Mobile internet
*123#
the phone code menu & Apps

10. Most customers have learnt to consume content on one of the lesser channels first
before migrating to Mobile Internet.
USSD: 4 years or more
WIG: 4 years or more
Mobile internet: 0-4 years
Mobile Internet USSD WIG WEB Currently they use combination of platforms
2% to perform functions:
23%  Mobile Internet & USSD
46%
 Mobile Internet & WIG
 Mobile Internet & WEB combinations plays
29% a insignificant role within the mass market
sector.

11. Many customers believe they are paying per minute and do not
understand the concept of paying per MB.
$$$ MB
Page size is very important to ensure pages load faster.
Competitor with quicker site could win over customers as they are saving their customers money.

12. Customers are very navigation-orientated they tend to read only copy that
is underlined and selectable.
A site’s relevance and offering is judged by navigation offered.
If the navigation is limited or the names are ambiguous they may believe you do not offer enough choice, similarly
if you offer too much it may not be read at all and may be too busy.

13. Most customers skim-read a page performing word-form recognition on
links.
Customers tend to move up and down the page very quickly and
may go up and down twice or three times before selecting an
option.
Some customers scroll down to the bottom of the page very fast
and then move up the page performing word-form recognition
on the up motion only.
If they find words that meet their need they will investigate the
page and site in more detail.
The paradigm of being above the fold is not that
important on Mobile Internet.
You do however need to entice them to scroll, so use the top of the pages wisely!

14. Images are seen as images something to make the site pretty, even
banner ads are seen as images and not a link or something to click on.
Only when banner ads have a “click here” within the
image, users noted that it was a promotion.
All customers only wanted to see imagery that’s relevant to
the area they were investigating.
Well placed imagery that aid recognition has been found
very effective.
The use of text within images must be kept to a minimum as
rendering of these images may impact the legibility of the
text.
The banner blindness paradigm is not prevalent
on Mobile Internet.
Careful with banner placement; if you sell unrelated info on a page, not only
will they not click on it the info on the page becomes questionable.

15. Most customers prefer to use the navigation options instead of the
search field.
This is down to mobiles being such small devices and the
keypads requiring the customer to be quite dexterous.
Literacy also plays a part; they may speak and read
English easily enough, writing is still a hurdle they avoid.
Rendering of entry fields on some phones is an issue as
the field is much smaller than the content required.
We find many use txt language in entry fields or enter
word that look similar to what they looking for.
It is imperative that you default the keypad to alpha or numeric to
ease entry, else they will avoid entering.

16. All of the above mentioned paradigms and insights were gained from
performing usability tests on customers using their own phone
By testing in the location where site will be
launched you gain an understanding of the
cultural preferences and customer needs.
You will gain a deeper understanding of word-
form recognition.
You will gain a deeper insight into
learnt-behaviours; what they have learnt from
the previous channel they have used and may
still be using.
You will gain insight on what and how
customers consume content on their phones.
All of which will enable you to design a better product that your
customer will need and love.

17. Thank you
Follow me: @hvorbek or @MantarayUX