Designers are fantastic. They do amazing creative with complicated software for challenging stakeholders and equally tough approvers. They use brilliant displays with more than 24 inches at resolutions better than most televisions.
This easy access to large canvases, compounded by large monitors and projectors in conference rooms has led to many creative sessions started with the desktop digital experience created or presented first, often leaving less than a third of the time to mobile.
However, if I told you three quarters of your audience was on a smartphone when experiencing your brand, would you spend less than 25 percent of your time reviewing it?
A mobile-first approach to design is contrary to the business environment but vital to the consumer brand experience.
For direct consumer brands the mobile web or app experience is paramount. Your consumers research, convert and repeat with the device in their purse or pocket. B2B brands will find key decision makers and influencers within a business are on-the-go with the same device.
To avoid mobile afterthoughts and truly champion mobile-first design, consider the following eight ways to influence from within:
- Identify the percent of consumers that use your brand on a mobile device, as well as which type of device; iOS, Android, etc. The numbers may surprise you.
- While in your analytics, also evaluate connection speeds. Are your users mostly on-the-go with cellular or planted with strong WiFi? Large file sizes on slower connections can result in a poor user experience and increase abandonment.
- Seek leadership input to champion the change. A top-down buy-in from leadership will bring about success in ideation, project requirements gathering, creative review, etc.
- Purchase test devices based on your average consumer to accurately design for the experience. Emulators help but don’t adequately reflect the experience, e.g. tap vs. click, lack of hover, etc.
- Brief agency and internal partners to present the mobile experience first. Segment agenda time based on the percent of mobile users to the brand.
- Make it part of the standard brief or project template to start with the mobile design or solution first before expanding out to desktop/tablet.
- App development may not escape the perils of desktop influence. Menus, home screens, and user flows can easily fall into the, “way we do it online,” generally meaning desktop. Challenge teams with a “less is more” approach given there is literally less space.
- If desktop shows first, ask to parallel present the mobile experience either with your own device or the test phones. A simple connector can easily share a phone experience on a TV or projector.
Does your organization evaluate desktop first? If not, we can help you and your teams adopt what most consumers have done so already, thier phones.