With the mobile product lifecycle is moving twice as fast as computers at their peak ten years ago, mobile publishing will soon be a requirement of doing business. Hype aside, there are really good reasons why you should be looking at your mobile publishing strategy… now.
There are 1.5 billion mobile devices in the world today, more than three times the number of PCs. As the devices increase capabilities and networks get faster, consumers are using mobile devices more and more for common computing and information gathering tasks.
Here are just a few reasons why I believe every publisher should be considering their mobile strategy:
1. Empower your reader
Publishers often what to control the experience, but the web has changed how we collect and share information. The Reader is in control, always. They want information that is relevant to their interests, when it is convenient to them and however they choose to interact with it.
For example, RSS empowers the reader to watch websites and be notified when they are updated. It separates content from the presentation. The reader can choose to go to the website or simply read the feed.
Mobile provides the reader with a similar tool, but with even more freedom as they can read your content where ever they are, while waiting for someone, riding the bus, or even sitting on the couch.
2. Have your content available anytime anywhere
Imagine you have a client coming to your office. But they forgot their notebook with your address. Why not have your address and other contact information on a mobile site?
Word-of-mouth advertising has always been the best way to reach new customers. But how many times has someone told you about something you were interested in at a party or while having drinks, but forgot about it later?
Mobile enables the publisher to have that information available to potential customers at the moment they want to see it.
3. Create a better experience for your mobile users
Recently there has been a lot of talk about transforming web content to mobile devices by simply removing images. This is not publishing mobile content, it’s looking at a webpage on a phone.
Mobile is another medium, like TV, Radio, Print or web. By designing for the medium with that audience goals in mind, you can create a better experience and leave a lasting impression.
4. Widen your audience
Not everybody uses computers to access information. Teens heavily rely on mobile devices to retrieve and share information. Elsewhere in the world, phones are used just as much for information as communication.
By publishing to mobile, you broaden the scope of your audience, providing your content the way they prefer to see it.
5. Add a new level of interactivity
From notifications to user generated content, you can provide your readers a new level of interactivity. You can use mobile as a way to inform and stay connected with your readers.
Mobile can be the bridge that connects all your communication channels together. The phone is the ubiquitous device that connects us to everything, that we don’t leave home without.
6. Give your content new context
Limited location-based services are here today and are increasing fast. Other location-based technologies like GPS, RFID, Bluetooth are converging with devices quickly. As a publisher this opens the door for providing a new context to content.
Today, traditional business can connect with potential customers when they are simply in the neighborhood. Tomorrow, imagine being able to “tag” content with locations? Providing users relevant and valuable information based on their location.
7. Have someplace for them to go
Mobile enables immediate thought to action, meaning when the reader sees, hears or even thinks about your product, there is an immediate action available to them.
But when they think of you, you need to have someplace for them to go. Creating and maintaining a mobile version of your site is becoming increasingly important. Google launched a feature on their mobile search site to search only mobile-friendly sites.
Will you be on that list when your potential customers search for you?
8. Interact with the real world
Today it is possible to link the real world and the digital world. There are several technologies available today using camera phones to capture and request information.
The reader takes a picture of what they are interested in and they can receive information, web links, digital business cards, even an application or a ringtone.
9. It’s easy
Publishing to the mobile web isn’t difficult, expensive or that time consuming, in fact it’s pretty easy. The mobile web uses similar standards as the regular web does. The learning curve is pretty minimal to get a simple mobile-friendly site up and running.
It only took a weekend to publish over 50 mobile versions of popular sites. With a little bit of thought and research, you can be publishing true mobile-friendly content by the end of the week.
10. Be a part of the future
Mobile is one of the greatest technological and cultural transformations in history. It has revolutionized communication as we know it, and will have equal impact on how and when we gather and send information.
In my mind it is a very logical extension of the Internet and just part of it’s evolution. Today we think of them as separate, but one day I think that will change.
Authors Note: This article was originally published on “Mobile Design”:http://www.mobiledesign.org which is now part of “Blue Flavor”:http://www.blueflavor.com. Future mobile articles will be published in the “mobile section of Blue Flavor’s blog”:http://blueflavor.com/ed/mobile
I’m in totaly agreement that designers and developers need to start paying attention to this are more. To emphasize point 4, I spent a year living in Japan teaching english to high school students, and all of them were far more comfortable surfing the internet with their cell phones then with an actually computer.
In class one day I did a straw poll and about 90% of my students had cell phones but only a handful had computers at home.
Brian, I would argue that as of now, in all mobile markets is not only important for anyone “publishing” a site to target mobile devices; but anyone distributing any kind of media as well. In the not-to-distant future it is going to be critical for anyone broadcasting and podcasting to be mobilecasting as well. With in a few years we are going to see the mobile device become THE primary device for listening to music and regularly broadcasted content. I also believe that the mobile device is also going to become the primary radio/music player for most people.
Video and audio capable phones started showing up in the US last year and are coming out in large numbers. Asia and Europe are even further ahead. The networks globally are starting to make a serious move towards 3G speeds; here in the US with Verizon and Sprint rolling out EV-DO and now Cingular upgrading to UMTS/HSDPA, downloadable music and video are now a reality for a lot of phones.
The time to start thinking about going mobile is now.
Thank you Brian,
I have really taken your post on board and as someone who provides services to real estate agents it hit me just how true that’s going to be for me in the coming years.
My virtual tours and videos will be needed to eventually run on mobile devices and I better get planning for it now rather than later. Someone is going to want video footage of a house on their mobile sooner rather than later.
I’d like to start exploring this. The number of available devices is a little overwhelming. Could you recommend a list of common devices to test?
What are the standard features that most devices share? Are there emulators for these features?
And could you provide a list of mobile design resources? In print? On the web?
Insightful write-up, Brian. Without doubt, mobile devices already hold a significant place with regards accessing web content, and in the not-too-distant future will likely be the primary medium for accessing the web.
There certainly needs to be a greater focus on making vital content available via mobile.
In response to Harry’s question, I have a number of tips in the discussion forum section of my website that could be of use, but I am not sure if we are allowed to post links here. I frown against spamming and prefer to be safe. If Brian will give an ‘ok’, I’ll post the link.
Yomi, thanks for asking and post away! And my apologies to Harry for not posting mine yet (always busy at the Flavor).
I try to keep all of mine resources here: <a href=”http://del.icio.us/bfling/mobile” rel=”nofollow”><a href=”http://del.icio.us/bfling/mobile” rel=”nofollow”>http://del.icio.us/bfling/mobile</a></a>
Thanks, Brian, here is the link to our thread on <a href=”http://domainstandard.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=35” rel=”nofollow”>Designing for PC and mobile access</a>. I have a few tips there that you might find helpful, and if there’s anything I overlooked or got upside down ;-), kindly share some of your thoughts as well.
Thank you Brian
Mobile is really a bridge between people and information. It has revolutionized our world. It can be great tool. We should think about it and use its possibilities.