The rapid proliferation of mobile continues with shipments of mobile phones and tablets predicted to reach 2.1 billion in 2014 representing 88% of global PC, mobile and tablet shipments and more and more advertising revenue coming from mobile.[1]
And revenue from mobile continues to accelerate. Just this week, Twitter posted 124% year-over-year revenue growth with 81% of all advertising revenue coming from mobile advertising. The always-on nature of mobile is bringing you closer than ever to your target audience. While this means vast opportunities to capitalize on 24/7/365 connectivity, users are demanding the same high-quality performance on their mobile devices that they have on their desktops and their attention span for sub-optimal experiences is minimal.
You can’t afford to get your mobile strategy wrong with consumers clicking away within just seconds if a site doesn’t load fast enough on their phones or if the content presented isn’t what they want. If mobile wasn’t already front-and-center in your business strategy, it should be now. Now what? If you are weighing the pros and cons of using responsive or adaptive design, dedicated mobile sites or building a mobile app, you are not alone.
In making your decision about which mobile strategy is best for you and your company, ask yourself how your audience interacts with your brand on different devices. What do they do when they come to your website from their desktops and what content are they interacting with? Is this the same or different than what they do when they access your website from their smartphones and tablets?
If target audience behavior across devices is generally the same, then using a web content management solution that can support your mobile needs through responsive or adaptive web design is a good choice. Responsive or adaptive design allows you to publish your www site, optimized for all mobile viewing experiences. You have one website that is presented in different ways depending on if your users are on their desktops, their smartphones, their tablets or other connected devices.
Having a dedicated mobile site means having two websites. If your audience interacts differently with your brand on a smartphone than it does on a desktop and their top activities are different on smartphones than they are on desktops, having an m site makes sense. The content on an m site is generally a modified or scaled back version of the content on a www site and is tailored toward the mobile experience. A recent survey by The Search Agency found that 67% of travel sites surveyed use dedicated mobile sites while only 25% use www sites in the mobile environment. The travel industry is a good example of different behaviors in different environments. How many times have you checked into a flight from your mobile phone en route to the airport but would you actually book a flight on your phone? Most likely not. Many news publishers including the New York Times, CNN, ESPN, and MLB, have dedicated mobile sites for users looking for quick and current headline news updates whereas those same readers look for longer-form, editorial content on their desktops.
At the far most end of the spectrum are mobile apps. A mobile app takes full advantage of the always-on nature of mobile. Apps take you as close to your target audience as you can possibly get. When your marketing strategy involves geolocation based services, alerts and notifications, messaging/communications and login identification, a mobile app is the way to go. Fluke Corporation built a mobile app, Fluke Virtual Sales Assistant to empower their sales team and customers to easily find products, reviews, features or software downloads on their smartphones and tablets. Fluke and Clickability partnered to integrate multiple data feeds and 3rd-Party applications to create a high-impact user experience for a technical, mobile audience.
Regardless of whether you chose to have one website that responsively or adaptively adjusts for mobile, a dedicated m site, a mobile app, or a combination of the three, your primary objective should still be making sure that mobile is integrated into your marketing strategy and processes. This means choosing one vendor who can support whichever route you have chosen to go. Having the ability to repurpose content across sites, apps, devices, and channels using one powerful web content management workflow saves time, costs, and facilitates integration across your marketing activities. SaaS Web Content Management Solutions like Clickability can support all of your mobile needs.
Learn more about how Clickability by requesting a demo.
[1] Gartner