Mobile doesn’t mean limited

Mobile web is still a relatively new area, and best practices haven’t been established – take everything you hear about mobile, including what I say, with a grain of salt. I’ve heard several times that mobile experiences should be watered down, slimmer experiences than the desktop version meaning that there is less content available on the mobile site than there is on the desktop site.  My solutions manager heard this at the Web 2.0 conference he attended, and brought it up yesterday. I believe there are compelling reasons why this is a bad mobile strategy.

User experience considerations

Every time I get directed to a mobile site on my phone, I nervously start browsing for what I want to see. Here’s why I’m nervous. While mobile internet browsing is awesome, it is nowhere near as effective as browsing on a desktop/laptop. Because of this, browsing on the phone is a more significant time investment than browsing on a desktop. Additionally, phones are slower because they connect over a 3g connection. I am frequently annoyed to find that after spending time searching for the info I need on the mobile site, I discover the page doesn’t exist on mobile and I am forced to restart my search on the desktop site. I’m redirected to the homepage and must start again, pinching and zooming and panning around on a desktop site, trying to get drop down menus to behave right so that I can (hopefully) find what I’m looking for. Since desktop sites are rarely, if ever, optimized for touch, it is possible that I won’t be able to find the content I need on the desktop site when browsing with a phone or tablet. So, basically:

  • A partial mobile site will inevitably interrupt a user’s browsing experience, forcing them to start their search for information all over again on a slower, heavier, desktop site.
  • Many full, desktop style websites are not optimized for touch. Dropdown menus, Flash features (for iOS), small text, and many other desktop conventions do not work on the mobile devices
  • Many mobile users are connecting through a slower, 3G connection or less. Sending the full desktop website is too heavy for most of these connections to respond well

What about “focus” on mobile?

I have been hearing a lot of discussion around focusing the mobile browsing experience. People sometimes bring up use cases like, “Joe is dashing from the airport to his taxi and needs to find the location of the hotel…”.  As Josh Clark mentioned in the UIE Podcast these on-the-go use cases are fun to build towards, but are a terribly incomplete picture. While these rushed use cases are real, they are not the only use case. People also check their mobile devices while waiting in line at the grocery store, sitting on their couch, and other more relaxed situations. In these situations, users would find an on-the-go optimized site unsatisfactory. Some recent data is revealing that people are using their phones for much more than just on-the-go tasks. Luke Wroblewski has posted some great data about mobile use. Some quotes from Luke’s Data Monday roundup and a few other data points :

I believe it is possible, through good interaction and visual design, to maintain focus on certain tasks that on-the-go users need, while still providing general users the ability to browse and find information that they need. I think that saying your mobile content doesn’t need to be 1:1 with your desktop content is a bit of a design cop-out. Admittedly, this isn’t always possible, but it should be a mark we all strive for. Good design can make this possible without making the mobile page overwhelming. As mobile design best practices start to form, this task will continue to become easier and easier for teams to do. Designers should strive to use repeatable patterns in their design to make the building and maintenance of the different browsing experiences as easy for developers as possible. Having 30 different text styles, inconsistent paddings and margins, etc make these sites hard to create and maintain.

So what about mobile first?

To me, today at least, mobile first means more about content than it does about design. If you don’t think content belongs on your mobile site, perhaps it doesn’t belong on your desktop site. I think “mobile first” means to streamline your content. Desktop experiences are generally bloated, with so much noise and clutter that it is difficult to locate the information you need. There is a common web content phrase that says, “Cut your words in half, then cut them in half again.” This speaks to the fact that desktop sites just have way too much content. If we think mobile content first, it helps keep both the mobile and desktop experience navigable and easy to use, providing a better experience across the board.

Mobile shouldn’t be limited

As a principle or guideline, we should strive to provide 100% of our web content to mobile devices. While the display of that content may vary, perhaps we don’t have all the same widgets, features, ads, etc, the content should be 1:1 as much as possible. The only caveat has to do with device capability. A common one, for example, is location services for mobile phones. This gives us some different things we can do on mobile vs desktop. Desktop as well has unique capabilities which justify a slightly different experience from mobile.