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News, insight and tips from the social web.
The Hoop blog covers the evolving digital landscape, social media, mobile communications, content marketing and also includes 5 top finds and Fish on Friday. Feel free to make comments.
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Jakob Nielsen: 'mobile sites vs full sites' debate. The Hoop view. »
Jakob Nielsen's views on mobile sites have caused some controversy in the developer community. Hoop look into what he said and whether he has a point or is off the mark.
Recently, one of the world's leading web consultants Jakob Nielsen discussed his thoughts on the mobile sites vs full sites debate, based on his company's - Nielsen-Norman Group - research. The post has been a subject of controversy since, with many people blasting the developer for an outdated view on mobile browsing.
[Image from Use It]
Nielsen stressed that companies should have a mobile optimised site, highlighting why full sites do not work for users on mobile devices. The user experience conversation has been going on for a while and, as any company that is aware of the growing numbers of mobile users will know, having a site optimised for smaller screens can bring about a very decent ROI.
Nielsen said:
"Good mobile user experience requires a different design than what's needed to satisfy desktop users. Two designs, two sites, and cross-linking to make it all work."
Hoop's business developer Gabriela Lacaci gave her thoughts on mobile browsing.
"As a non-technical person, I believe we should have everything. That is, desktop website, mobile responsive design and apps. I find it time wasting to have to revisit the same sites through mobile browsers, when an app sits nicely on your screen. However, this can easily be worked around by making apps that solely redirect to a mobile optimised site. A mobile optimised site for mobile users visiting the main site is a definite for me. And yes, if necessary, have more than one if the main website is a mammoth for content and activity.
I say: if you have too much content, cut it, you are probably saying too much anyway. If it's complicated, simplify it. We want it to be easy and are likely to spend more the easier it is to get to the checkout page. Personal conclusions? Apps, even if just to link to, and tablet/mobile optimised for users of these. As for desktop, maintain older versions for now but don't invest in them, instead phase into responsive designs. And please remember, I am not a technical person.
As a non-technical person, Gabriela is a voice of the public, even though her digital savvy allows her to articulate it much better than most. She realises there is a noticeable difference in experience when browsing a site optimised for mobile. Gabriela also indicates her liking for apps, because of the convenience of hitting the site instantly, rather than dealing with loading time.
So yes, Nielsen was spot on in his assessment that there has to be a different design for mobile users, including cutting out unnecessary content and taking into consideration 'fat thumbs'. What the web design community isn't happy about however, is his inability to mention responsive web design, eliminating the need for two different sites.
As conversations continued online, web designer Josh Clark labelled Neilsen's advice on mobile as "just 180-degrees backwards." Clark continues to state that many people use mobiles as their only access to the Internet, stressing that users should not be patronised and offered a limited experience or forced to browse a full site on a tiny screen.
"When you see a 'full desktop site' link on your phone, you're looking at an admission of failure."
Clark argues that building separate sites for different platforms during an era when new devices - with differing resolutions, screen sizes and portability - hiting the market every week is poor strategy. There is also the issue with separating mobile and full site URLs. According to Clark,
"[Nielsen's] suggestion that there should be a distinction between desktop and mobile website URLs is damaging, too. Any piece of content should have one address on the web, not several. When I'm on a phone, that content should be formatted appropriately for the small screen, and when I'm on a tv-based browser, it should be formatted appropriate for the giant screen. But the URL – the 'uniform resource locator' – should be uniform across devices, one place to go no matter what I'm using to browse.
Nielsen was given the opportunity to respond to the large amount of criticism on the same site, in an interview with Tanya Combrinck. When he was questioned about his apparent neglect to mention RSW, Nielsen response was rather baffling.
"...I was writing about user experience, not implementation. As mentioned above, responsive design is one of the ways to achieve different user interfaces for different devices. It should be up to the engineers to determine the most efficient way of achieving the user experience goals. All we usability people should decide is how the site should work for users, not how this is implemented."
It seemed apparent that he was talking about implementation in his blog post, but now he is arguing that it was about user experience. Was he only talking about user experience? Does implementation not affect the user experience? Surely, if implementation became so hard to maintain because of several sites for different platforms, it would directly affect the user... and their experience!
When reading the interview, it feels as if Nielsen is backtracking. He even goes as far as to give negative comments on RSW design, ironically, because as Mat Marquis' Tweet points out, the very platform Nielsen used to ignore RSW was responsive!
Hoop's experience manager Nick Smith uses his expertise to articulate where we at Hoop felt Nielsen went wrong:
"I agree with him that a desktop site is often not suitable to mobile. However, I think his approach to always have mobile separate from desktop is flawed. My approach would be to start with desktop functionality and work out how (if) it translates to mobile.
This is a quite a complex conversation that he's boiled down to a binary decision. His approach doesn't work in the real world. This post seems solely about the user experience, but I think he's not researched well enough if he doesn't take new technology into account (he doesn't explore responsive techniques at all). A friend in UX recently told me he's not sure he can keep up with all of the new technologies in web design. He was staggered at the pace of change and the way it affects his work.
I think Jakob is suffering from this."
Categories: Insight
Tags: Design, Jakob Nielsen, Mobile, Responsive web design, User Experience
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What’s the responsive plan for the BBC? »
A look at the potential I see in the responsive design for the BBC News mobile website. For me their focus on content and reading is right, but now I'm wondering if desktop is missing out.
Today Chris Russell wrote up the justification behind BBC News' switch to responsive design for their mobile site. They've taken the mobile website (m.bbc.co.uk/news) and adapted it so that it now deals with many more device sizes, from desktop right down to smartphone sized screens. The techniques they've used relate to responsive web design, the benefits of which we've covered before.
However is "mobile" really the right place to be targeting this effort? The design of the new site is beautifully simple and brilliant for reading, but describing this as a "mobile" site (supposedly as opposed to "desktop") seems to be assuming too much about the context in which it will be used. I appreciate you haven't forced your mobile visitors to the mobile version (OK apart from here) they can still see the standard view, but what about changing the naming convention (the positioning) of this new site?
[The responsive mobile BBC News homepage]
Top priority for context in web design has to be the site visitor's objectives, not the device they use. Labeling a simplified version of your website as the "mobile" view assumes that mobile visitors don't want to perform complex activities. Research from all over the web (including some startling stats from sites we've built) suggests the world is quickly going mobile. Assuming they don't want to take their complex activities with them is quite a stretch.
The Opportunity
Rather than complain that you're doing it wrong, I think you have the perfect opportunity. Do you remember Facebook Lite? Do you use Instapaper or Read it Later? Have you seen the Apple Safari Reader? Each of these tools has a different purpose, but the overall effect is roughly the same, a light view of the content with many of the extras (adverts and other trivia) stripped out. If I'm reading anything on the web, Instapaper is my preferred view. Forget about the distractions I want to focus on the content.
This new site uses the technology behind responsive web design, but with a twist. Traditionally (what tradition there is on the web) responsive web design requires one web page i.e. www.bbc.co.uk/news responding to many devices. However, in this first iteration you've chosen to effectively take a copy of the page and put it here m.bbc.co.uk/news/ (Note: for non‐geeks, the "www" and "m" are the bits that make the difference). What if, as I've found myself choosing to do, I can switch between the "mobile" and standard views, not dependent on the context of my device but the context of me? This strikes me as rather more appropriate with such a content heavy site where reading is such a core activity.
The feeling of focus I had when reading a "mobile" site story was the same I have when using Instapaper. In fact I may well find myself reading on links beginning with "http://m.bbc…" even if I'm on the desktop. Just my own small experience suggests you have the beginnings of a site feature with Instapaper‐like clarity, but without the overhead of your visitor having to be enough of a geek to embed the aforementioned services into their lives. So why not rename what you call a mobile view? I like what you're doing, I just think your signposting is a little off.
Categories: Insight
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Responsive web design: another fad in design and development? »
There are high hopes that responsive web design will lead to great online experiences. We take a look at the method of the moment.
Think about the devices you use to access the web. Chances are you use a desktop or laptop computer. But you might also access it through a smartphone, tablet PC, games console or TV. Do each of these devices give you the same useful experience visiting your favourite websites? If not, why not?
The web, up until now, has been designed from a uniform perspective. Taking its lead from print design, web design has strived to reproduce templates across all of the devices that you might use. This was good for a time. But this "must look the same" approach missed the true potential of the medium.
Unlocking the potential of the web
Responsive Web Design is causing great excitement in the industry as it promises to unlock new digital ideas and experiences. RWD is the method of the moment, but before it came Graceful Degradation, Progressive Enhancement and many other design methods aimed at pushing the medium forward. The difference this time is that, where previous approaches chipped away at the surface of pixel perfection, RWD demands a completely new understanding of how a web page works.
RWD increases the value of web content, no matter what device you use to look at it. Value to the visitor is determined by the content, interaction or tasks they can complete. Think of your favourite social network. A responsive version of it would adapt to your device, making it easy and intuitive to catch up on news, find new friends or contacts and update your profile. If the website was not responsive you would need to zoom into the page on a mobile device and struggle with buttons designed for desktop interaction – giving you a poor experience and bad impression of the brand.
The potential for RWD goes beyond mobile. However, the rapid increase in the use of mobile devices, with different resolutions and features like touch screens, has been a key driving force in the return to some of the founding principles of the web. Content is king and, combined with well structured code, you can use it to make your website support your brand values. As many businesses and organisations have found in the digital age; brand value is not about appearance, it is about user experience.
So where do we go from here?
The latest responsive site we launched has seen a surge in traffic from mobile devices. iPhone increased by 275%, Android by 484% and an astonishing 1040% on iPad. There was a clear business case for creating a responsive website in this case. Perhaps there's one for yours?
We're convinced responsive website design delivers a better user and brand experience and we're currently working on new responsive websites for clients and ourselves. If you think your customers deserve a great online experience get in touch.
Categories: Insight
Tags: Business strategy, Content strategy, Digital strategy, HTML5, Mobile, Mobile First, Reputation, thisishoop, User centred thinking, User Experience
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Are FTSE 100 websites missing out on mobile? »
A recent survey of FTSE 100 websites signals a resounding yes. We highlight the huge mobile opportunity presented to corporate marketing departments.
Customers, investors and the media have fully embraced the mobile web and the opportunities the platform presents. We've covered much of this in great detail in previous posts.
But new research, released last week, shows that the majority of the corporate world has yet to wake up to this change in consumer behaviour and realise the potential mobile presents for their business.
The report, the first of its kind and published by Magus and Investis, has some sobering statistics about just how ill-prepared the FTSE 100 is to meet people's needs in the changing consumer landscape.
Despite mobile website traffic being predicted to overtake desktop traffic in 2014, it's startling to know that 80% of the FTSE100 currently don't offer support for mobile devices. Of that 80%, it is reported that user experience on mobile is further worsened by, on average, 4.25 compliance issues per webpage.
Corporate sites don't matter on the social web
Attitudes towards the importance of corporate websites vary from business to business. Many brand owners prioritise digital investment at both brand and consumer level; whilst others prefer to invest 'on platform' in a bid to be more social.
Marketers must be mindful though that not everyone who matters to their business is game for being social – or likely to believe the upbeat advertising message. Consumers, investors and employees increasingly want to know what a business stands for; not just just what they do, make or sell.
- Sustainability has moved from the margins to core business strategy
- Mobile web browsing will outnumber desktop browsing within 2 years
Tying these two realities together is this: people who really want to know about the business behind a brand will find the info they need in many places online, including the corporate website. And increasingly, when looking for this information, they'll be using a mobile device.
For the small percentage of corporate websites that do offer mobile support, just 4% have dedicated fully mobile sites. The remainder "typically cover investor relations (IR) information such as news, press releases, share price performance data and corporate contact information, and are updated simultaneously with the corporate website".
Olympian misjudgement
For mobile users trying to access corporate content online, the current experience is generally poor. But, as the new report states in its conclusion, there is huge opportunity to "reward early adopters with competitive advantage and increased audience share".
In a year when many FSTE 100 companies are sponsoring the London 2012 Olympics, another once in a lifetime opportunity to engage new audiences and maximise return from their investment might be missed.
Serving the right content for the device
Mobile devices have specific functional capabilities that suit particular content and user experience. Smartphones are particularly well-suited to delivering easily digestible content in bite size chunks. Tablets, on the other hand, are better for more immersive experiences and richer content such as video. Corporate web managers must do more to understand the basics of the mobile web – but, according to the research, none of the surveyed corporate sites have been built using responsive technology.
What is clear is that those companies take the opportunity of mobile and future-proof themselves with useable, mobile-friendly content will reap the benefits. Hoop recently completed a fully mobile-optimised responsive website for PepsiCo – who have seen (year on year) website traffic increase by 275% (iPhone) to 484% (Android) and an astounding 1040% on iPad.
Download the report and get in touch if you'd like Hoop to help you go mobile.
Categories: Insight
Tags: Content strategy, Digital strategy, Mobile, Mobile First, Reputation
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Search, plus Your World »
Google's latest announcement about forcing Google+ into live search results poses some interesting questions; but is the initiative as bad as everyone's making it out to be?
We've covered Google's apparent attempts at becoming social at length here on the Hoop blog; but have always been a little suspicious of their true motives. When we discussed Social Search back in October, we concluded the post with the following:
It's the '+1' button that is going to make or break their attempt to become social. Google+ is just a novel way to encourage people to sign up for a Google profile – which then gives Google access to users' social data but more importantly the '+1' in search. A 'truly social' search experience.
On Tuesday, Google Fellow Amrit Singhal (the engineer partly responsible for the algorithms that Google's search engine is based on) published a blog post entitled "Search, plus Your World" – which is summarised below.
- Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
- Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you're close to or might be interested in following; and,
- People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.
Over the next week, Google are rolling out the above three features (which we'll call Search+ for now); all of which result in personalised search results to live search queries. These features will be available to the 40m users with Google+ accounts; producing individual results for each user's query, populated with content from (only) Google+.
On the one hand, the (opt-out) Search+ intiative is wonderful – and will provide Google+ users with truly personalised (and relevant) content from their social circles. It's also worth noting just how much Google appear to be supporting social data. Just think how (much more) useful Google would become if it were to feature content pulled from every one of your social networks! But then on the other hand, Search+ raises some interesting questions.
- As Search+ won't include results from Facebook (which blocks Google from crawling it) and priorities Google+ content over the publicly available results from Twitter, is Search+ anti-competitive?
- Will Search+ cause Facebook and Twitter to open up and allow Google to crawl their non-public content – or simply deepen the animosity between the three companies?
- Will the personalisation of results from the world's most popular search engine (by market share) have consequences on how we discover information?
Facebook has always been a closed platform, denying Google the right to crawl its databases – although some public posts are available to the search engine. But then Facebook and Google have never really been best buddies.
Twitter did have the 'Realtime Search' agreement with Google, where the search engine's crawlers could access tweets and profiles. But then, for some reason, the two companies couldn't see eye to eye when the agreement came for renewal. So it wasn't.
It has been suggested, although this is a long shot, that Search+ is an extremely risky move to get Facebook (and to an extent Twitter) – its serious competitors in social – to open up (to search) or face the same antritrust procedures that are currently being leveled at Google. Given the history, it's extremely unlikely this is going to happen.
So what's wrong with Search+? Yes, it's a little anti-competitive and will probably lead to a slap on the wrist from an antitrust inquiry – but it'll do little to clear the air between Google, Facebook and Twitter. Search+ won't cause Google+'s competitors to open up their databases either. It's Google's focus on personalisation and their departure from delivering relevant and unbiased results to queries that is causing the issue – an issue explained by Eli Pariser in his TED talk below.
Google's job, as one of the best and most popular search engines in the world, is to deliver unbiased, un-prioritised results to its users. Even if those results do include Google's competitors.
By forcing Google+ into the results page and skewing the relevancy of results, Google is ultimately moving away from what made Google successful in the first place.
Categories: Insight
Tags: Content strategy, Digital strategy, facebook, Google, Google+, Reputation, SEO, Social search, Twitter
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It all adds up to mobile first »
Here's some big numbers: Google estimate that mobile advertisers spent $1bn this year, a figure set to significantly increase to $4.4bn by 2015.
Businesses that ignore the growth in the numbers of mobile using customers are in danger of being ignored.
If you've been following the Hoop blog over the past few months, you'll have seen how important we think mobile devices are. Smartphones and tablet devices are changing the way businesses market their content, advertise to consumers and are leading to a more user-centered approach to digital strategy. That is, one that recognises the change in human behaviour and doesn't fight against it.
But if you still need convincing that you should be thinking mobile first, we've compiled a selection of awesome infographics that might just bring you round. Simply click the links to view the full infographic.
The size of the mobile market should not be underestimated (via iStrategy)...
Mobile devices are changing the way we buy things (courtesy of Microsoft Tag)...
They're changing the way we interact with each other on social networks (thanks Flowtown)...
And (American) small businesses are relying on mobile devices and connectivity to survive (via Intuit for Mashable)...
The markets are increasingly embracing mobile technology. And if Econsultancy's recent Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing is anything to go by, businesses are starting to realise that if they don't start thinking mobile first they'll be left behind.
We recently applied this 'Mobile First' methodology to a new client website with a design that is responsive to the end-users' device. Feedback so far has been fantastic. If your business needs help developing a digital strategy that puts mobile first, why not get in touch?
Categories: Insight
Tags: Content strategy, Digital strategy, Mobile, Mobile First, User centred thinking
