Making Sure your Digital Tactics are as Mobile as the Platform

Since the advent of the internet as we know it today, companies have been creating websites to showcase their businesses and provide a way to communicate with customers more quickly.  In the beginning, this was just a few simple pages that someone might even layout in an easy application like notepad.  However, as times change and technology progresses, we find ourselves in a faster-paced lifestyle.  Always on the go, we want access to information immediately.  Consumers no longer have the time or desire to simply sit down and look at web pages on their computers.  This is why the move to mobile is so crucial. 

According to Statista.com, as of the beginning of August, there are over six billion smartphone subscriptions in the world as opposed to just over three billion just five years ago.  This is a trend that is predicted to reach over seven billion in the next five years.  This doesn’t even begin to take into account devices like iPads or other tablet-style devices which can sometimes require significant changes from a standard computer. So if businesses want to reach consumers, we must be more mobile mindful.  None of this is to say that mobile design is a new concept in the least. The creation of thousands of mobile apps would certainly suggest otherwise.  However, over the course of the last few years, by pushing it to the foreground we are ensuring that we are staying in the forefront of technology and meeting the needs of our customers.

However, mobile is doing more than just changing how we view, but also how we find information.  In 2018 google launched a mobile first indexing program in which google would crawl through the mobile versions of sites to begin indexing the content to share when a topic is searched.  In 2019, this became the default for all new websites.  In other words, if you aren’t being mobile mindful, you are being forgotten. 

So, what should come first?  The proverbial chicken or the egg?  In the past, it was much more common to allow your design to be desktop first.  After all, when developing a website, you are doing that on a desktop (or laptop) machine.  So, it makes sense that we would think in those terms to start.  However, translating mobile to desktop is often a much smoother process than trying to reverse engineer a desktop version.  Another way to look at it is that you can always take an easier to engage with design for mobile and add some bells and whistles for desktop but adding those in to start can sometimes be problematic when trying to make things work for mobile. 

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that “The only thing that is constant is change” and the internet is an ever-present testament to that philosophy. Just as soon as we begin to get a grasp on where we are in terms of the technology we have and how we reach an audience, things will shift under our feet, and we must learn to adapt anew.  Mobile is one of those trends that has been here for some time now and will continue to be here in one form or another.  How we react to that and learn to better meet the needs of our clients will determine how successful we are. If you’re ready, reach out to us!