It seems seasonally we hear about web fads and trends. Some stick and others simply take time to mature. Mobile is sticking and maturing. OVER 1 billion cellphone users use smartphones! A recent Google sponsored study shows:
- 81% browse the Internet, 77% search, 68% use an app, and 48% watch videos on their smartphone
- 72% use their smartphones while consuming other media, with a third while watching TV
- 93% of smartphone owners use their smartphones while at home
More stats gleaned through a recent webinar I attended by Heather Mansfield at DIOSA:
Mobile Technology Stats:
- 225 million mobile subscribers in the United States (74% of the U.S. population). Globally, there are 4x as many cell phones as there are desktop/laptop computers.
- 1 in 4 families is cell phone – a trend led by young people and the poor.
- 1 in 4 Americans now access the Mobile Web daily through mobile browsers and/or smartphone apps.
Why Nonprofits Need a Mobile Website:
- To improve your text alert campaigns. (View CDC Health Alerts, m.cdc.gov)
- To make your smartphone Apps more functional. (View Sea Shepherd Menu, Sea Shepherd Store)
- To promote your text-to-give campaigns. (View m.nature.org)
- To enable a QR Code campaign. (View Big Wild QR Code, Big Wild Mobile Petition, Big Wild Desktop Petition)
- To reap the benefits of being an early adopter. On the Mobile Web, it’s 1999 all over again. (View m.google.com, Opera Mini)
What is "mobile"? A: Creating an independent site, or a subset of an existing site, that is optimized for viewing on today's mobile devices (which there is a veritable plethora). Obviously with a smaller interface one needs to think of how can a person navigate often complex user interface elements that exist on current sites optimized for 800x600 pixels and larger. Navigation extends across 700 pixels +, calls to action are supported by photos or stylized graphics, content is extensive often with the need to scroll. There are cross links, related resources, perhaps a tagging structure. You have a mouse or trackpad to easily navigate the small pointer to exactly what you want to click on.
Hardly any of these big-screen items can be translated easily, or at all, to small devices that are often not much larger than a 3x5 index card! What to do? How to do it?
To start, we recommend thinking about:
- Target Audience - this may be a no brainer, but really who are those persons walking around using their mobile devices that might want to access your site? When and where do they want to look up your site or service? What are their habits?
- Activities - we all know the best way currently to browse a site it with a large monitor. Users with mobile devices tylically look for specific information such as your location, contact information, services offering, "like", etc. How about your organization site? What do your web analytics tell you are the most visited pages and activities?
- Content - now that you have investigated your audience and you understand their primary habits, usage trends and activities it's time to think about what content you would like to optimize for mobile devices. It would be cost prohibitive and superfluous to deliver all your content on your full site to the mobile platform, mainly because mobile users tylically do not need to dive that deep. Also you may have 7 main and 4 or so sub-menu items that wouldn't translate well to a mobile interface. Keep it simple and useful. It's about delivering pertinant and relevant information!
- Content Source and Delivery - where is your content coming from? How will you be able to maintain up to date content on your main site and your mobile site? There are a lot of FREE to low-cost subscription services where you can create adequate to surprisingly good mobile site (here is a Google search result for you). These service will not hook up to your full website though, so anything you input in your main site will not update your mobile site. Contact your web development firm to determine how content can be integrated to a mobile version. You will save time if your content managment system (CMS, like Drupal) also delivers content to boith versions, yet the costs will be higher yet typically one-time (as opposed to a subscription like many of the better mobile site creations services offer).
- IA - information architecture. With target audience, activities and key content identified you can now start sketching out what your mobile version can look like. Take a look at these great examples:
- San Diego Zoo - note, this will stretch to the width of the mobile device, shrink your browser window width
- The Jimmy Fund - check out the "Make a Gift" section
- The Guardian - great example of a news site
- Target - retail yet very good IA example
There are many many topics relevant to going mobile, yet this should get you started. Let me know if you have any questions!
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