NTC Reflections: Why are we Holding (back) the Phones?
Posted Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 8:00 am by Marissa (46 posts)
A few days ago, I posted on the ubiquity of Smart Phones at NTC. It’s no wonder that we get requests from clients to “make the site work for mobile,” or “maybe we can make an app for that.” But any developer can tell you, it’s not that simple. Developing for the mobile web is itself an art form, different from developing a site for the (kind of) big screen.
That is why I was a little disappointed at the lack of sessions on the mobile web at NTC. There were a few sessions on mobile fundraising, but they seemed to primarily focus on using SMS.
There seems to be a lot of interest in the non-profit world on creating mobile-enabled web sites and applications. Hopefully, next year, that interest will manifest itself in a few sessions demonstrating some great non-profit work.
April 19th, 2010 at 10:51 am
I think you are spot-on with this post, Marissa! While there’s a ton of talk about mobile fundraising, I think the basics of mobile browsing are going to be more important in the years to come. My favorite sidekick is my iPhone and there’s nothing worse than not being able to browse properly from it.
April 19th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I attended an interesting, information-packed session on “Lessons in Design and Strategy for Your Mobile Experience” at the Information Architecture Summit (http://2010.iasummit.org/talks/9753) while you were at NTC. Two key takeaways from that:
1. iPhone has the lion’s share of the market and that share is growing so if you’re going to design for mobile, that’s the platform you want to target.
2. PARE IT DOWN! Amazon on mobile devices highlights the search and the Gold Box and just a few other things. Not everything on the “webpage” needs to be translated to the mobile version so pick your key transactions and lead with those.