Keeping up, as the world goes mobile

April 26th, 2009

How does your website perform when accessed from a mobile?

Have you ever used your mobile to check the score for the football game you missed, because you were stuck on the train? Or used it to look up the address of that store you were certain was on Oxford Street, but just couldn’t find when you got there? Well, a recent article in The Independent suggests that you’re not alone; twenty five percent of British mobile phone users currently access the web from their mobiles at least once a month, and an estimated 1.2 billion people will regularly use their mobile phones to access the web by 2012.

What does this mean for businesses who currently provide websites and web-based services optimised for desktop browsing rather than mobile users?

Some of the issues

  • Your website may provide a poor user experience when accessed by a mobile browser, it or may not work at all. As mobile web use increases, it will be those businesses who offer usable, useful, and satisfying mobile web experiences that will be perceived as innovators and leaders by the web-savvy market.
  • You may be missing out on new potential revenue streams. The Independent reported that London has become the core for mobile start-ups, even surpassing Silicon Valley thanks to lower mobile tariffs and an abundance of talented people. The same article notes that major Venture Capitalists value mobile users in their business models at up to six times higher than ‘traditional’ web users.
  • You may risk losing customers to competitors who have used their mobile web experience as a differentiator for their services, particularly in highly competitive markets. Personal Banking is an example of an industry where offering best-of-breed mobile services might be a compelling reason for customers to switch.

The way forward

So what can you do now to start building a mobile relationship with your customers, and to make sure you stay ahead of your competitors in the mobile space? Here are a couple of ideas:

First, make sure that your website meets your customers’ real needs when they access it from their mobile phone, and offers a usable, useful, and satisfying experience. You can focus your design and development efforts by:

  • researching what users expect from your website when they are mobile
  • identifying and documenting the most important tasks for your mobile users
  • testing to make sure new designs allow users to perform those tasks
  • reviewing your website using different mobile phone browsers to identify high-level issues.

You can also look for innovative ways to engage your customers in this new mobile-oriented world, and stand out from your competitors. In order to stimulate and direct your creativity towards a successful product, consider activities such as:

  • conducting creative user research including cultural probes, focus groups, and participatory design techniques to help you understand what is important to your users today, and to help you explore new mobile revenue streams for the future
  • making your product development process user centred, to ensure your creative ideas develop into a product which is effective, efficient and satisfying to use.

So, what next?

If you’d like some help improving your mobile presence, feel free to contact me.

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