2010, what does the coming year hold for business? Well, if we’re to be successful… massive changes.
We are living in an age of exponential growth. And because of this; great uncertainty and great opportunity. The landscape in which we all operate is not as it was – even a couple of years ago.
The last 2 years has seen twitter grow from 475,000 to nearly 70 million users, facebook grow from 20 million to 350 million users, and the volume of AT&T mobile data transmissions grow by a whopping 3500%.
These new technologies and platforms have enjoyed staggering growth, and huge adoption across both the business and personal world, but the danger for all businesses trying to exploit these opportunities is to think that having a twitter, facebook or LinkedIn account is enough, because over the next couple of years it probably won’t be…
By 2011 it is estimated that mobile devices (Blackberrys, Androids and iPhones) will outsell PCs globally. Pair this with the rise of cloud computing and AT&Ts experience with mobile data transmission growth, and we can see that the future is very possibly NOT where you thought is was! Capitalising on this shift in behaviour will require you to be innovative and quick thinking. But most of all to embrace the fact that things are changing, and digging in your heels and pretending that the old ways still work simply isn’t going to cut it.
So, what is?
For some time we’ve recognised that blog based sites have looked very attractive to both Google (regular updates, lots of content, lots of meta data), and to visitors (becuase they’re full of opinions & facts rather than marketing speak) but unfortunately these are at odds with the needs of small screen viewing. So in light of the fact that increasingly sites are not being viewed on desk based machines, are we all missing a trick? Shouldn’t we be optimising our sites for both fixed and mobile devices? Shouldn’t we be considering this audience too?
Yes, we should.
It’s easier to engage people on platforms where they’re in a more receptive frame of mind ie. not sitting at their desk, so I believe that we should be trying to make the sites as appropriate as we can for these smaller platforms.
So, what you need is to rethink how your website may look to visitors who are not going to see it using the same machine that you’re using.
If you have a look at a previous post you’ll notice that we’ve just reworked our website with this in mind!
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. The need to deliver website content to mobile devices has been largely ignored until the appearance of the iPhone which definitely changed the game. However, most content providers still do not grasp the concept of the mobile web. Advanced devices such as the iPhone, Android powered devices and the Opera Mobile Browser are making content providers believe that they do not need to adjust their content but trying to read content designed for the desktop on a mobile device is very frustrating. Re-designing is only the beginning. Content providers need to realise that the content delivered to mobile devices needs to be re-organised and delivered in a format that is easily digested on small screens. Devices such as the Nook eReader are also going to be game changing as time goes by with the ability to connect to the net via Wifi and cellular networks but the larger screen offers more flexibility when it comes to content rendering. Cameron Moll’s book Mobile Web Design (http://bit.ly/8DxduM) offers some great insights into content delivery to the mobile platform.
Adam great blog – but you can go further. This is not just about DESIGN, but which CONTENT is actually relevant while on the move, and which NAVIGATION is best used to access the content. A lot of websites (good and bad ones) these days use long forms, Flash, Ajax, animated images etcetec – all stuff that is very compatible with today’s browsersm but 0 with today’s Mobiles – a proper, dedicated approach to mob site build will deliver best results.