Laddawn.com : Mobile strategy

Kickoff meeting notes

Near term goal

Sales people in the field are an untapped audience, in part because we're not with them wherever they go with just a desktop presence.

Our goal is to enable sales people to search and share quickly via mobile web interface. (They do not have to be able to place orders.) Doing this will give us "permission" to do more on the engagement front.

There is typically a progression from a mobile website to an app. Most likely we will eventually want an app, but we can start with modifying our styling to make our site more mobile-friendly.

Next steps

Surface current design elements that don't translate well to mobile (eg hovers).

Propose new styling/handling for these elements. 

Determine level of effort to change styling through CSS; what should be done in-house v. outsourced or w/contracted assistance.

Bring this info back to the group; determine where this fits with other priorities.

Design considerations

Mobile devices are more personal than desktop devices which presents an array of opportunities.

We need to view this as leveraging the benefits of mobile  v. merely accommodating mobile users. Mobile UI conventions and native features represent opportunities to make the experience even better than it is on desktop in certain situations.

Styling for mobile is likely to require making design decisions - this isn't just a matter of modifying our code so what the features now stack up vertically.  This may converge with other initiatives like quoting non-stocks on the web, which may call for changes to the widget. We've also had our eye on merging category drop downs with top level categories.

As we design new website features, we should design for both desktop and mobile.

If there are things we do to keep an initial release manageable, like not having to enable order placement (yet), do we need to block those features on the mobile site? Does this imply an adaptive or "m dot" approach? 

Goal for meeting

• Determine vision, broad goals, next steps
• Review/discuss technical solutions - what are the intersections between the technology and our opportunities? - but let the technology ultimately be guided by the vision and user experience

Agenda

What and why

What are the goals? What are our opportunities?

• Engagement, conversations, relationship building?
• Extension of web features - additional channel for searching, quoting, sharing, buying, checking, maintaining? All or just some?
• Other?

How

Mobile configurations

Mobile website

• Responsive Design. Often referred to as “RWD” for Responsive Web Design, this design approach uses fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images and varying CSS style rules to deliver different user experiences to desktop, tablet and mobile devices while maintaining the same HTML and URL structure. The site shrinks or grows according to device.
• Adaptive Design. Referred to by Google as dynamic serving, adaptive design serves different devices using the same URL structure, but it does so by detecting the device and generating a different version of the site’s HTML appropriate for that device. The site has multiple versions that are served through common URLs.
• Separate Mobile Site. Sometimes referred to as mDot (“m.”), this configuration delivers different HTML on separate URLs depending on the device detected. The usual arrangement is to have the desktop site located on the www subdomain and the mobile-friendly site’s pages located on the “m.” subdomain. Pure Oxygen Labs recently reported that 54 percent of the Internet Retailer top 500 brands currently use this configuration.

Mobile app (aka "native app")

Apps are actual applications that are downloaded and installed on your mobile device, rather than being rendered within a browser. Users visit device-specific portals such as  Apple’s App Store, Android Market, or Blackberry App World in order to find and download apps for a given operating system. The app may pull content and data from the Internet, in similar fashion to a website, or it may download the content so that it can be accessed without an Internet connection.

Website v. App

Apps are often better suited for more complex transactions, personalization, and integration with smartphone features like camera, GPS, notifications, etc. But with apps you're dependent on the user to download updates from an app store. With websites, updates are automatic, and you're maintaining one code base, not many (to match the various operating systems - Android, iOs, etc.)

• Mobile Website vs. Mobile App: Which is Best for Your Organization? (A nice, concise overview.)

• The Curse of a Mobile Strategy "Ultimately, these are technology questions. We have to ask ' What's the best experience for the customer?' " (And what's the entire experience, across multiple channels?)
• How Often (and Why) Consumers Delete Mobile Apps From Their Phones (for example: to free up precious space)

Other mobile features to consider

• Texting
• Camera
• Voice
• GPS
• Search
• Social media
• Notifications
• Inbound calls - how might they differ from inbound calls placed from the office?

Who, where, when? (What next?)