At An Event Apart – Austin 2013, Karen McGrane shared some interesting facts and statistics on mobile web usage and her thoughts on disruptive innovation.
Here are my take-aways from the talk:
- Some will say, “Why would anyone want to do ____________ on mobile?” It could be something like, do your taxes, apply for a job, etc. This sort of question limits us and discounts the fact that many of the world’s developing countries, poor and minorities can only access the Internet from a mobile device.
- Disruptive Innovation = a product/service that is inferior in many ways comes out but ends up creating a brand new market of customers for their ‘inferior’ product or service
- Examples of disruptive innovation include:
- large, high quality furniture-sized radios vs smaller plastic radios
- Offset printers vs desktop printers
- DSLR camera vs smartphone camera
- Kodak (bankrupt) vs Instagram (sold for 1 billion)
- Desktop Internet vs mobile Internet
- The connection I made and the example I can’t stop thinking about: DIY website solutions like Google Sites, SquareSpace, etc vs hiring a web designer/developer
- Examples of disruptive innovation include:
- The mobile-only user – someone who only accesses the Internet through their mobile devices
- 45% of low-income people
- 45% high school students
- 60% Hispanics
- 50% young adults
- By not making the web mobile-friendly, we make a second-class Internet for people who might already feel like a second-class citizen
- “Browsing the web on mobile can sometimes be like reading the web through a toilet paper roll” —Karen McGrane
- There is no such thing as ‘writing for mobile’, there is just good writing. If it’s good enough for mobile, it should be on your regular desktop website.
- Good content transcends platform
- Responsive design won’t fix your content problems
- Don’t ask, “Why do that on mobile?” Ask, “What else can we do on mobile?”
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