The opportunity and constraint of mobile

• Tue, October 02 2012
• Filed under: Mobile

I’ve heard a lot of smart people talking about mobile the last few months, and two consistent themes are worth sharing.

First, mobile is a huge opportunity.  It allows us to reach people at new moments, including dawn (66% wake up with their phone).  More and more, people will be opening our emails and visiting our sites on their smartphone.  Around 67% of people already shop on their phone.  Just as giving has followed but lagged online shopping trends, I think the same will prove true with mobile.  So the headline here is, mobile will bring a whole new set of possibilities to our work.

But while mobile expands the ways in which we can engage with people, we need to recognize that we win by seeing not only opportunity but also constraint.  We can’t shrink down our website or giving page, stick it on smartphone and call it a day.  No one wants massive amounts of options on a tiny screen.  So we have to make hard choices about what we will feature on mobile.  Less is more.  We must have complete simplicity in design and choices, or it won’t work at all.

Embrace the potential, but also the limitations.