Diane:What's the number one reason so many mobile sites fail when it comes to user experience?
John:Well first off, I hope most of those who’ve failed so far have gotten the word that FailCon is trying to spread and realize that failing now is ok — as long as they keep working at it and learning from the places they’ve fallen short. That being said there are some unnecessary fails out there, with many different reasons. I don’t know if there’s a number one per se, but I certainly think that one of the most common is many of them haven’t had enough planning and discipline when envisioning the unique aspects of mobility.
Over the past few years, the explosion of mobile data usage, led by improved networks and devices, has undeniably made mobile a big digital buzzword; it probably only competes with “social” for the top spot. The downside of achieving buzzword status is the phenomenon of buzzword compliance – making sure that any new product has it whether it really makes sense or not. As with social and other important aspects of a digital experience today, teams can avoid failing in those ways by simply taking a step back and thinking it through a little.
To do this, at Moment we help our clients explore what real people actually do while away from the PC, the situations they might find themselves in, and how this matches up with the product or service you want to create. It’s important to be realistic - asking “Can we see someone doing this?” is an important question, answer it honestly, and keep working at it until you have something where the answer is yes. If you fail trying to create that experience, you’ll learn, and be able to build on it.
Diane:What are some examples of great mobile designed experiences?
John:There are a lot of great ones out there, but two of our favorites at Moment are Instapaper and Zipcar. Both of these aren’t just mobile – they provide mobile experiences that fit in perfectly as a part of the overall cross platform experience.
Instapaper is a great example of this – they’ve designed the experience on each platform to be perfectly aligned with the users’ most likely behaviors on that platform. The PC experience is designed to let someone seamlessly save an article or blog post immediately upon discovering it. The insight there is that the time when someone discovers content is often different from when they have time to consume it. The mobile experience is the opposite, designed primarily for consumption. It’s an awesome experience, and they’ve resisted the temptation to over design the user interface, which helps a lot.
The second example, Zipcar, has similar strengths. The team there obviously looked at the needs of their customers while away from their PCs – while out in a Zipcar. In many situations like this, teams would have prioritized functionality already built for the web like making a reservation, but the Zipcar app puts unique features like extending a reservation and unlocking the car front and center. They did a great job.
Diane:What is your advice to an entrepreneur who is trying to prioritize when and how to create a mobile site?
John:The answer to when is usually as soon as possible – as long as it makes sense to have one in the first place of course. The answer to how is a little trickier... At Moment, we’re big believers in getting something out into the real world and seeing how people will actually use it – and this usually means cutting back to core functionality, and launching it quickly if only to limited audience, to start learning as soon as possible. This is, of course, easier said than done.
It’s hard to put something out into the world that doesn’t fully represent your vision, even when you know intellectually that vision will change over time. We advise that entrepreneurs look at the content and functionality they could provide, determine what’s going to make a big impact where its needed - adoption, engagement, or revenue; wherever it might be, but keep it focused. Having the wherewithal and discipline to do this always pays off.
Finally, when you’re trying to learn from failure, you have to be fully open to what the lesson might be. If you have something out there and learn that it is not working, take it out or change it, don’t just add to it. Being as open to editing down as you are to creating more is very hard to do, but very rewarding.
