Imagine you’re waiting for a bus and you remember a website that interested you from a recent radio ad. Taking advantage of your temporary free time, you pull out your trusty smartphone and diligently enter the web address into your favorite mobile browser and...disappointment. The website isn’t optimized for mobile and is difficult to navigate via the constant zooming and panning necessary to find the content you’re looking for.
The situation above can be repeated by changing a few elements but always arriving at an all too familiar outcome. Maybe you are watching TV while casually using your smartphone, as 86% of us do, say stats. A commercial directs you to a mobile website that helpfully states “This content is not available on our mobile site. Please visit the desktop website on your computer.” Or maybe the website was built solely in Adobe Flash, which isn’t available on mobile devices, or inexplicably the website simply does not load at all, leaving the mobile consumer with a seemingly empty page. Is this what you want your brand experience to be on mobile?
What do all of the experiences have in common, beyond the missed opportunities for advertisers? All of these examples are still occurring in the year 2013 and mobile is still seen as a “future priority” for many businesses while the overwhelming majority of mobile web users expect a mobile-optimized experience now.
The SXSW Perspective: mobile, mobile, mobile
The great thing is that this point is not lost on South by Southwest (SXSW), Austin, Texas’ yearly film, music and interactive conference, an event known for innovation and forward-thinking ideas. Though so much of the SXSW press coverage hypes the next big thing – think Google Glass and 3D printing – mobile was literally and figuratively everywhere at this years’ conference. The schedule boasted a wide array of excellent mobile-focused sessions that squarely addressed the “mobile web now” disconnect experienced by some brands. It was great to attend so many sessions populated by real people that addressed real businesses with real world problems.
At his popular SXSW session, Brad Frost, mobile strategist and web developer of note, stated it thusly, “One web. Thematic consistency. Give the people what they want.” It speaks to content parity between devices, an experience appropriately-tailored to the each device but consistent to the brand, and the desire to have it now.
At a packed Mobile Saturday discussion panel, Michael Griffith of Bottle Rocket went as far as to say that “mobile is fast becoming the hub for brand experiences,” that, “often the experience starts here too,” and that mobile is “an opportunity to build brand loyalty like never before.” This can be a potentially terrifying situation for brands lacking even the most basic of mobile solutions!
Responsive Web Design
Upon casual thought, it may seem premature that people assume that every business’ web presence will be usable on a mobile device, but the iPhone has now been available since mid-2007 – that’s almost six years (or approximately 28 Internet years, which are like dog years but nerdier). There are now over 133.7 million smartphone users in the US alone (comScore Feb 2013), many of whom are on their third or fourth device. Do you really want to not make this audience a priority now? This is where Responsive Web Design comes in since it can make your website future-friendly while providing backwards compatibility at the same time.
In a nutshell, a website designed and developed using Responsive Web Design (RWD) will adapt itself to a smartphone, tablet, desktop computer and all of the various sizes in between. This fluidity, or responsiveness, harkens back to the earliest incarnation of the web when all websites naturally reflowed their content to adapt to the size of the browser. This isn’t to say that design/development technique lacks sophistication or is merely a simplification back to older, non-engaging web experiences. No, RWD allow you to have your cake and eat it too...though you will certainly need to bake a new cake. (Dibs on the batter spoon. Seriously.)
Steve Fisher nailed it in a great SXSW responsive process session with this acronym: “COPE: create once, publish everywhere.” Though it was seen that way for many years, the web is simply not a fixed width. The real promise of responsive web design is not to build pages but “a continuum of experiences” which can be utilized fluidly across a range of mobile devices, both old and new.
Tomorrow? Now.
Here’s another way to think of it: fellow SBCer Adam Deardurff eloquently stated in his SXSW post “Playing to Where the Puck is Going to Be – Staying Ahead of Changing Consumers” (if you haven’t read it yet, please do) that brands should be nimble and look to where an increasingly forward-looking consumer will be in the near future. Well that same consumer expects that a fully-realized mobile web is here now – the puck isn’t halfway across the rink, but in front of you waiting for you to take the shot.
Responsive Web Design and the emergence of the mobile web should been seen for what it is – the new status quo. Mobile is here to stay and not ready to be usurped by the next big thing. Brands with deficiencies in mobile should look to solutions like Responsive Web Design to engage today’s consumer where they live and use that engagement to create compelling brand experiences. Because if you don’t, someone else surely will.
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