This post is based on a presentation give at Online Information 2011. Published over 2 parts the second will appear in the New Year.
Working at agencies in the mid to late 90’s often meant received phone calls asking did we do web sites – we said yes sure we do them.
We followed this up with questions about the audience, the messaging to be incorporated – the reason why the site was needed – the answer, it didn’t matter the managing director wants one … and … by next week!
Not long ago mobile was about just being available on mobile devices.
Now that requirement has very rapidly become the demand to be available on all mobile devices, the UI needs to follow the brand guidelines that were developed for the website.
To understand just how rapidly mobile has become a core requirement we can consider what we observed whilst working with News International. Here we witnessed how only three years ago mobile was managed from what can only be described as a broom cupboard by a junior project manager. Move forward to 18 months ago and Rupert Murdoch was involved on a regular basis.
Websites today are very complex, having many demands from across your business and importantly high demands from your audience. For those that do have a current projects, is mobile a requirement?
Is mobile the reason for the project or just a nice to have?
But does mobile really mean an App?
Those looking at mobile web have the best chance of success, but you need to manage expectations. Having spoken to a number of our clients over the past year about what mobile means for them it is clear that budgets are tight.
As described earlier mobile has rapidly become very important with high demands and equally high expectations. So naturally the main question is how do you get the most value.
If we were to lose the term ‘mobile’ from the conversations then quite a lot of the problem goes away. By removing the term mobile we remove the classic need to ‘formulate a strategy’ for that. This might seem quite controversial and goes against common anxieties that arise if you don’t have a strategy for mobile.
Instead ask yourself three questions
- Do I need to consider mobile?
- Do I need an app?
- If you don’t need an app, what do you need?
The answer to number one is yes for all of you. For number two the answer is yes if you manage tasks or do something other than delivering content, but no if your main focus is content and publishing information. Therefore to answer number three: you’ll need to work on optimising what you already have and importantly what you already know your users demand.
Answering these three questions makes mobile a tactic not a strategy – do you form a strategy for each new browser release?
By answering the previous three questions, in many cases this means “just doing things”. Designing mobile using traditional design methods often proves costly. You’ll end up having to sign off many ‘versions’ of the same page to cater for all the variations in screen size and orientation.
To overcome this means prototyping as soon as possible.
Prototyping is great; it creates a shared understanding across your team and provides a reality check on those high expectations whilst at the same times offers a live platform to test your content within a mobile context.
At Media Pro in November this year (2011) we heard from Belron (Auto glass). They have a policy of “just trying things”, they admit lots of these things fail but the 10% that works, works really well – their mobile offering delivered a ROI in less than 1 week with little or no marketing.
Now if we compare that to The Good Pub Guide. They spoke of a having made a few apps and talked at length about what they ‘might do’. The Good Pub Guide have a lot of competition already for the core of their offering namely pub reviews, like many niche publishers individuals or small groups can steal an audience in a very short time as they are often agile and fast enough to “just do things”.
Strategy and Insight are different.
I’ve suggested that strategizing is an expensive path to follow for delivering to mobile with the budgetary constraints that we often see when talking to clients.
What is worth taking time to understand is the insight that analytics offers. This data is invaluable when trying to understand what your audience already expect access to and therefore where you need to focus any initial effort.
Most of you will have analytics installed on your site. Most are probably running analytics on the client side e.g. Google analytics that rely on JavaScript. Some will be using server side analytics.
You’re the lucky ones; you’ve had the ability to understand true mobile device usage as many mobile devices can’t run the JavaScript analytics relies upon.
We see that once mobile specific analytical tools are installed a truer picture of mobile usage is seen. For all site owners additional unique users are a good thing so it’s worth considering installing an analytics tool that is capable of capturing that last few percentage of unique users already visiting your site.
So what’s important to consider when looking at your analytics? Two considerations to start with are bounce rates and new visits. Bounce rates are important especially if you charge for content, users are demanding connected experiences across all touch points. New visits are an indicator of the percentage of new visits coming from mobile.
