Are Your Mobile Assumptions Correct?

As more and more visitors to sites that we build are accessing the sites on some sort of mobile device, we are frequently asked to come up with a nicer mobile experience than a site designed several years ago may be currently delivering.  In most cases these projects come to us as just that: “Make a better mobile experience out of our existing site.”  Redesigning the existing site is not in play and we have to work with what’s there.

There are a variety of ways that you can detect mobile devices and tailor the website experience for them – and that’s a post for another time.  Regardless of how you decide to proceed there is one overarching theme that informs many of the decisions that need to be made: “what do mobile users want?”

Your existing site is most likely made up of a bunch of different sections, pages, calendars, slideshows, videos, promotions, articles, and other miscellaneous widgets.  Do mobile users want or need all of them?  Do you want to deliver all of those elements to your mobile users?  Why or why not?

Simply because of the space available on a mobile device, you may want to turn off, or at least reposition left and right columns, leaving the main content area as your primary mobile experience.  You may want to deactivate calendars that are two big for the display.   Many features (flash, for instance) do not play nice with some web browsers installed on common mobile devices so there’s certainly a technical component to your decisions, but beyond that there is the question of how mobile visitors are using the site and what they (and you) want them to experience that may be different from someone sitting at home.

I recently heard someone talking about a mobile experience of a restaurant website and saying something along the lines of “mobile users only want two things: directions and the menu.”  Pretty simple then, yes?  Just deliver those two pieces of the content and be done with it.  But that’s a pretty big assumption to make.  Especially as people start to move to their mobile device being the primary way that they experience the web.  If I’m out on the town looking for a place to chow down (I have kids now, but I remember what it was like to be out on the town), I may want to know more about your restaurant than just how to get there and whether you have any vegetarian options.  I might also want to know if I’m dressed appropriately.  Photos of your dining room would be great!

Likewise, with your organization’s mobile site: I may not be simply looking for a way to donate (though that may be your primary interest).  Perhaps I want to know more about what you do.  Don’t assume I’m not interested in your programs, staff, or history.  Much of the time I spend browsing sites on my smartphone is when I’m stuck somewhere in line, or in a waiting room.  I’m bored, and when I’m bored I’m far more likely to browse aimlessly around a site than I am when I’m in front of a computer working.  Unless your navigation is awful, in which case I’ll find another site to look at.

Regardless, it is often decided that, in the interest of streamlining the mobile experience, we will reduce the scope of the site for those visitors.  Which demands that we ask: “If it’s not important for your mobile visitors to get parts of your site, why is it important for anyone else?”  If you decide that an entire section of your site should be removed from the mobile experience because you don’t think mobile users will be interested, or you don’t want to distract them from the goal you have for them, then why would you assume that those same people will be interested when the visit using their computer?

There are those who recommend designing a site primarily for the mobile experience rather than the other way around.  The “Mobile First” argument goes that if you force yourself to design to a restricted viewport you separate the wheat from the chaff.  It’s a tempting vision: your sprawling organizational website reduced to only that which directly serves your mission and is intended to elicit immediate action from your visitors.  If you are interested in learning more about the thoughts around designing for mobile first, check out some of these articles from Luke Wroblewski, former Chief Design Architect at Yahoo! and general usability smarty-pants:

http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?933

http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1117

So what’s the answer?  As with nearly anything you can ask about Web design and user experience: it depends.  In some cases you will absolutely be able to determine that mobile users want something different from your site than users sitting at a computer.  Or at least that you want to deliver a different experience to them.  Take it as it comes, but just remember that your assumptions about what people want will nearly always be wrong unless you ask them.

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