Mobile First or Web First?
There is a lot of talk about pursuing a mobile first strategy. This means that instead of building a robust first iteration of the concept as a website, the first iteration is instead a mobile app, usually of the iOS flavor for a very obvious reason. In accordance with the laws of lean startup, releasing both a fully baked web and mobile app at the same time is wasteful, particularly given the meager resources most startups have available to them.
Mobile first makes sense at first pass. Everyone is tethered to their smartphones nearly 24/7. As the capabilities of mobile phones expand, so do the things people can do with them. They are our proverbial handheld supercomputers, always on and always available (until they run out of juice or hit the data limit that is).
Mobile is also in many ways the sexier platform. Designing for mobile phones pose unique design and user experience challenges. The pace of innovation of mobile platforms appears faster and more dynamic than for the dusty old web browser which now two decades old (can I get a shout out for Mosaic). Plus, whereas the growth of PC’s has stalled and heading for decline, smartphone usage is rocketing and mobile devices cover every corner of our planet.
Image from Smashing Magazine
But mobile first can also be the wrong strategy. In the same way that tablet computers are not the best platforms for typing documents or doing intense video production, mobile phones have plenty of limitations. The form factor, processing capabilities, and input features all heavily influence the types of applications and use cases that make sense from a mobile perspective. Just the minimal screen real estate alone is a major huddle in moving traditional web and desktops apps over to mobile.
One needs to consider the situational context and user experience. Mobile phones are great for those in the moment situations, but not great at digging around activities. When I need the answer for one thing immediately, mobile is great. I need to find a restaurant around me, I pull up Foursquare Explore. Someone asks me about some obscure bit of trivia, a quick search leads me there. I want the latest sports scores, boom it’s in there.
When activities involve research and analysis, mobile platforms do not perform well. If you need a last minute hotel booking for the night, then a mobile app is great. If you are planning a family trip and deciding between various options, then a mobile app is not going to cut it. You can check out a LinkedIn profile, but doing a broad review of job candidates not so much. Looking up a contact versus building a dossier of contacts for a sales deal. Finding an address versus searching through real estate listings. Looking up restaurant reviews versus writing a review. Sending a payment versus managing your financials. You probably get the point.
There are plenty of apps that do in fact work well as mobile only. There is no denying that a mobile first strategy makes a ton of sense for certain types of apps such as those involving location or contextual search. These are in the moment use cases where the mix of immediacy, location, and specificity makes mobile an obvious choice. You need an answer now or do this thing immediately in a particular context.
Could there be a time when those digging around functions can be performed elegantly on mobile platforms? Within the course of five years, mobile interfaces have already improved by leaps and bounds in the five iOS and four Android major releases. Siri and Google Voice are becoming credible voice-driven interfaces. Best practices are developing around navigation and interactivity and visual design. With better semantic search applications, highly tuned relevancy algorithms, gesture based interfaces and seamless voice driven user experience, the mobile experience should only improve further well beyond want we can currently conceive. Indeed a time will come when what we consider to be the de facto working computing interface, sitting down at a desk, looking at a flat-screen monitor, and typing into a physical keyboard, will become obsolete.
Back to reality however, we are still far away from that vision. In much the same way that my friend William Peng discusses First Time User Experience (FTUE) and network effects, you need to consider what is going to be of most value to users. That means the question is more complicated than simply mobile or web first. Compromises need to be made and decisions rendered on what platform is going to result in the highest acquisition, usage, and stickiness.
Determine beforehand the most relevant use cases for your concept and how those use cases play out across the various platforms. If it sounds like a toss-up, then evaluate your resources and other constraints to determine which platform makes sense economically and market wise. If you go mobile first, also recognize that there most likely will need to be a web interface created for user administration, sign ups, and other minor but necessary tasks. If you decide web first, be careful of damaging the FTUE by releasing a stop gap, limited mobile app or one that is merely a clone of the web version.
Whatever you choose, make sure you first deliver a quality product and understand the customer usage patterns before expanding to other platforms. In a sense, it is not a question of mobile first or web first, but rather user first.
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- surreabral reblogged this from marksbirch and added:
Surreabral: Great points. By focusing on the user experience first, you let the solution drive the platform decision,...
- marksbirch posted this