Mobile Mayhem
Mobile mayhem is spreading. It reminds me of living Philly years back, and hearing that a snowstorm was on its way. I’d rush to the supermarket only to find that all the meat’s been bought up and the canned items have been picked through thoroughly. Three days (and 3 inches of snow) later I’d look in the pantry and wonder how wise it was to invest so heavily and hastily in canned ham.
What does this have to do with mobile web design? I see the same frantic attitude toward the mobile web. Everybody wants a mobile site and they want it yesterday. I also see a lot of hasty decisions being made, the result of which are poorly designed or ineffective sites. Technology moves very fast, advancing exponentially. Those who don’t have a mobile presence want to keep up with the Jones’. A lot of people fear that if they don’t act quickly, they’ll miss the mobile boat.
Well, Will You Miss the Mobile Boat?
No. The mobile boat is here to stay. A more important question would be did you get on the right boat? There are a lot of different strategies and technologies out there. You just need to learn to make sense of it all, and come up with a plan that works for your organization.
Understanding User Needs
Just like desktop web site design, mobile design strategy revolves around understanding the needs of your users. If you have a good website, you probably already have a solid insight as to their needs. But even so, you can’t assume that your users’ needs are the same on a mobile device as they are on the desktop.
Understanding User Context
Mobile refers to the user’s situation, not the device.
The key to designing for mobile customers is to understand their context.
Understanding their context means understanding HOW, WHERE, WHEN and WHY that person is using their mobile device.
Questions to ask yourself when addressing your users’ context.
- Who are your users?
- In what situations might they be accessing your site on a mobile device (as opposed to on a desktop pc)?
- What are their constraints?
- Time: People usually access their device during idle moments, while in transit, or between other daily tasks.
- Physical Constraint: Mobile phones are often operated with one hand (on a train, while driving (uh-oh you’re gonna get caught!), or while carrying small children or mammals.)
- What value could your content or service provide your audience, based on their situation?
- What type of mobile device are they likely to be using?
After investigating your users’ context, you can start exploring the best ways to communicate with them. With context in mind, you should start thinking about your web content, and how it can adapt to the constraints of a mobile device.
Device constraints include:
- Small screen size
- Intermittent or slow network connectivity
- Long page load times
- Limited support for advanced web functionality
- Limited battery life
- Huge disparity in devices and device capability in the market
It’s easy to look at all these constraints as shortcomings of the mobile web. The truth is that understanding these limitations is essential to developing a strong mobile strategy. But more importantly, the key is to realize that mobile sites have a tremendous potential to engage users, and offer many advantages over traditional desktop sites.
Advantages over desktop sites include:
- Mobile devices can be location-aware, giving you the ability to deliver content that is directly relevant to your users’ context.
- More people in the world have internet enabled mobile devices than desktop computers, making it a key (if not the primary) means of mass communication
- People have an intimate relationship with their mobile phones. They are typically not shared the way that a family might share a desktop computer. Because of this, there’s a lot of potential to market toward an individual’s desire to personalize their device and make it their own
- They are always “on”. Most devices access the web, sending and receiving email and text messages, even when the owner is not actively using it.
- People carry them by their side religiously. Think about how you would feel if you lost your phone, or even accidentally left it at home one day (quick: did you just check to make sure you have your phone in sight?).
The mobile web is not the same as the desktop web. Although it has advantages and disadvantages, it’s neither better nor worse. It needs to be thought of as its own unique entity...consider it the misunderstood cousin of its desktop counterpart.
Tips for Designing a Mobile Website
- Be ubiquitous. Create your content once, and deliver it across multiple platforms and devices.
- Understand that you can’t support every device. Start by focusing on a few. But make sure that the ones you focus on are the ones that your users are likely to have. Just because you have an iPhone doesn’t mean your customers do.
- Create a mobile specific template. Don’t try to recreate the desktop web experience. Develop an interface that gives easy access to the information that is most relevant to the user’s context. The key is for content from the desktop site to be re-used, but delivered and aggregated in a way that makes sense for a person accessing it on the go.
- Always give a way to opt-out of the mobile template and allow access to the desktop site. People with smart phones like the iPhone and Android, may have a good network connection and want to access the desktop version.
- Keep it simple. Focus on a limited number of pages so that there is less time wasted on page loads. Don’t build in unnecessary or complex interaction without a reason. Eliminate non-essential images when possible to improve performance.
- Use a layered approach to serve up rich interactive experiences to the devices with more capable browsers. The site should give the user the best possible browsing experience within the constraints of the device.
Invest Wisely.
Do you really need an iPhone app?
There are certain times when you would want to create to a device specific application. The reasons for doing this might include:
- You know that the majority of your audience has the same device.
- You are building a game that will rely on the device’s processing power, and not network connectivity speed.
- You are creating an application or service that is based on device specific features like the camera, music library, geo-mapping capability, or access to contact lists.
- You want easy access to the native interactions available on the device (touch, pinch/zoom, etc).
Why you wouldn’t create a device specific app.
- You become reliant on developing in a language that is specific to the carrier or device.
- You are targeting a limited audience.
- If you want to recreate the application on additional devices it can be costly and time consuming to port over.
- The process of distribution can be complex, and the carrier will potentially take a small cut.
- Updating the application usually requires redistribution.
Why the Mobile Web is the Future.
- The mobile web is device independent.
- You can program with the same web technology (HTML/CSS/Javascript) that’s probably already in use on your desktop site.
- Wide support for these technologies on mobile devices is available and growing rapidly, largely due to the success of Safari on the iPhone.
- New mobile browser technology is breaking down the barriers between what is possible in the browser vs. what had previously only been possible in native web applications. (For example, accessing location.)
- New browsers support technology like HTML5 and CSS3, which lets you create rich interactions and make use of offline data storage.
- Distribution and updating can occur instantaneously simply by republishing to the web.
Bringing it All Home
That’s a lot to consider. But the mobile market is a huge one to tap into, and its only going to get bigger as competition drives technology forward. The biggest obstacle over the past few years has always been device fragmentation (things working differently, or not at all, on different devices), but what we’re seeing now is increased standardization in how the mobile browsers render web content. This is very encouraging, making it an exciting time to be developing mobile content, and lowering the cost barrier to break into the market.
So there you have it. Hopefully this article helps you come up with a solid strategy for going mobile. I am curious to hear what your thoughts are on where the mobile web is headed and how it may affect your business.
If you want to learn more, I recommend the following resources: