A recent article in Read Write Web revealed 87% Of Connected Consumers Prefer Websites & Mobile Sites Over Apps, which is fantastic news for digital strategists trying to manage budgets.
Opportunity to Consolidate Digital Spends
Rather than spending additional budget on applications we have the opportunity to really maximize the mobile browser experience. In fact, preference for mobile (smartphone or tablet) websites reveals the opportunity to design websites from mobile views out.
“Mobile out” means planning the mobile browser view of the website first. Creating the full browser view comes last.
Designing and budgeting mobile-out also alleviates a few other traditional budget snags and interface issues, such as:
Development, development, and more development
Designing from the mobile view out to bigger devices means considering development first. Rather than budgeting separetely for the website, the mobile browser, the application, the tablet… development can now be consolidated to one very flexible language. I recently worked on a new launch that did just that.
The website was built using HTML5 and WordPress. It’s flexibility is device agnostic –meaning budget was spared from needless spends accommodating infinite device sizes.
Over-done design
We designed the website to be viewed in the mobile browser, forcing a clean simplicity we may have otherwise not had. There’s little room for design-by-committee when real estate is constrained.
…Though I really shouldn’t use “constrained”; the smaller real estate challenges designers to think creatively to create a clean, usable interface.
Broken user experiences across platforms
One of the biggest complaints on mobile application reviews is inconsistency from the website. Users log onto apps expecting the same functionality the business website. When expectations are managed or met, an app’s review credibility can quickly suffer, rapidly deflating the return on investment.
Inconsistent user experiences can also kill credibility and trust. Check out these user experience insights from Best Buy in the email sent to subscribers. (Like what you read? Get subscribed below!)
From the above HTML5 and WordPress example: Rather than building for each device touchpoint, the digital platform we built was flexible enough to be consumed across user experience opportunities.
Poorly prioritized content
When you begin designing for mobile the simple real estate restriction forces you to prioritize what is most important to the user. Not only that, this means you have to make usability a top priority. And that’s fantastic.
It’s more important to strip out the extra details on the mobile browsing view and introduce “extras” when the user will benefit most.
Your turn
Have you built mobile-out? How was your experience?
Or have you created budgets for this type of project? What did you like or not like about the approach?
