Reaching for Mobility

There seems to be a great debate on both the best approaches to mobile solutions, as well as the longevity of the mobile web space. We address the latter with two questions:

• If you have a smartphone, when do you plan on going back to a flip phone?
• When do you plan to stop using your phone completely?

Mobile isn’t coming. It’s here. And it wants to be the life of the party. Between Q1 of 2012 and Q1 of 2013 the percent of mobile devices accessing a website doubled.

That will only continue to rise.

Then there is the question of which mobile solution is best. Responsive site? Separate site? Native app? Web app? Hybrid, which uses both online and native features in a seamless experience? That’s a lot of choices; each the answer depending on the unique situation. We are experienced at evaluating the situation and the unique business objectives to come up with the best mobile solution for both the business and the end user.

We design all of our mobile experiences using a content-centric design strategy. What does that mean? We base our entire design around the content that you are presenting to the user. The user doesn’t have the same expectations of the internet as they would on a desktop. On a desktop the user usually(but not always) has a high speed connection using a machine with a processor that is more than powerful enough for whatever a website wants to throw at it. While it may not seem like it, they typical desktop/laptop is like a race car; lean, mean, and screaming with muscle-power(at least as far as the average website is concerned.)

Now take a mobile device. The processors are slower. It’s a slave to whatever network it’s connected to, as well as whatever bottleneck their provider wants to apply to said network. (It’s true most phones can access the internet via wifi; if you assume that all your users will be using this kind of access…. well, you know what happens when we assume, right?) Consider the mobile web to be a 1976 Reliant; it gets the job done but the average user expects to be wowed.

These restrictions have created the modern day mobile user. They still expect a certain user experience, but they are a little more forgiving on the lack of bells and whistles AS LONG AS you can get them the content they are searching for at lightning speed.

That is the heart of content-centric design. Learning to walk the fine line between an creating an engaging user experience while keeping the content accessible. Not only do we talk the talk but we walk the walk.

Find out how we can create both an outstanding experience for your users while giving them the content that they are searching for.

Time to Mobilize

From a responsive designed website to a native mobile app for your business, we have the experience you need to advise you on the best solution for not only your business but also your customers.

While most people want to access the web via a mobile friendly site(75%), 96% said that they encountered sites that were not designed for mobile. And 48% of those said they were frustrated and annoyed with that experience. (See full article here.) Yikes!

Don’t let this happen to your customers. Contact us to discuss how we can give them the experience they want.