4 Things to Consider in Your Mobile Strategy
Deciding whether to build a tablet or smartphone specific site requires an evaluation process, but it could be worth the payoff.
TheeErin via Flickr
Amazon has been making headlines much of September. Wednesday’s long-awaited announcement that they are entering the tablet game with their $199 Amazon Kindle Fire was an appropriate follow-up to news from earlier in the month that the world’s largest Internet store (with revenue of $34 billion in 2010) was testing a major redesign of their website, in short optimizing the shopping experience for tablet devices. Set to feature a bigger search bar, larger buttons and an emphasis on digital goods instead of physical ones, Amazon has not yet said when the new design will be ready for all consumers.
“Amazon is one of the few companies that sees significant e-commerce dollars,” notes Greg Sterling, an Internet and mobile analyst with San Francisco-based Internet2Go—an Opus Research advisory service. “Partly that’s about the brand and the trust they’ve built, but it’s also about usability and what they’ve done for shoppers. This is a chance for Amazon to capitalize on an opportunity to expand its brand and have the type of mindshare in mobile and tablets that really is unprecedented. It’s very forward-thinking, as they have typically been.”
But is it worth the investment? According to the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) research released on September 12, “by 2015, more U.S. Internet users will access the Internet through mobile devices than through PCs or other wireline devices.” It also “forecasts that the impact of smartphone and, especially, media tablet adoption will be so great that the number of users accessing the Internet through PCs will first stagnate and then slowly decline. Western Europe and Japan will not be far behind the U.S. in following this trend.”
While that research speaks for itself, it’s still only 2011, so it’s important to recognize that current consumer behaviors differ whether browsing online on a traditional PC, on a tablet or a smartphone (while also recognizing what the future holds). In early September, Google estimated that 15 percent of searches for holiday gifts and product information in 2011 will come on mobile devices this Black Friday.
“Much of the e-commerce still happens on PC’s,” says Sterling. “But people are increasingly using smartphones and tablets in the shopping process. Smartphones are used namely as a research tool to help in purchasing things later online or when they actually go to the store, and tablets are sort of in that middle ground, because they provide the mobile experience but on a larger screen, which is appealing to many consumers.”
So should you redesign for the tablet and smartphone? Here, we break down the evaluation process, why getting the design right is vital, how to measure cost and how to calculate ROI.
1. Evaluate: Purchase and Usage Patterns
“The first question I ask is why,” says Melody Adhami, co-founder of Plastic Mobile, a Toronto-based mobile experience and design agency. “We avoid people who come in and say that they want every platform, because they’re not really thinking about why they want it and where their customers are. Each of the phones and tablets have a developed demographic and different penetration levels around the world, and you need to know who your users are and where the bulk of them are before redesigning.”
The best way to do that is to evaluate your own data and see how your customers are finding you. Is the majority of your traffic coming via mobile devices? If so, it’s worth a deeper look.
“We’ve got all these people running around with all these different devices, looking at your site in a variety of ways,” Sterling adds. “For Amazon, they’ve been cultivating the mobile buying experience with all of their apps—from actual purchasing to price comparison and more—so they have more evidence than most.”
Similar to evaluating where your own customers are at, it’s important to take a look at where your competitors are and how customers are interacting with those brands. Again, with research suggesting that e-commerce will be bigger on mobile and tablet devices by 2015 than PC’s, is it a forward-thinking investment you’d like to make?
2. Design: Remove the Clutter, Crowdsourcing & Limit the Clicks
Remove the Clutter. Designing your mobile or tablet-friendly website is not at all the same as designing your traditional website. According to The Wall Street Journal article describing Amazon’s redesign, “The new site emphasizes Amazon's digital goods over its physical ones. On the old site, a column of buttons leads users to both electronic content and physical goods, such as toys, clothing and sporting gear. On the new site, a single row of buttons advertises only digital books, music, video and software.”
What works on a traditional website is typically a data-rich environment where you can click around, find the products you want and add them to your cart. If you aren’t focused on e-commerce, you still want to be a solutions-provider to keep users from going to a competitor’s site. On a tablet or smartphone, it’s about simplicity and ease of use.
