Guest blog post by Rodney Rumford: He is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of SlimSurveys.com which is a customer insights platform that provides tools for marketers and businesses to gather insights and feedback via micro-surveys.
For many years people have been saying that this is the year of mobile. Well as it turns out, 2013 truly has become the year of mobile. For the first time in history, more email is opened on mobile devices than on desktops. While this might appear obvious to many people reading this, this should serve as a whack on the side of the head for many of the doubters. What has driven the proliferation is a variety of things. But it is not the devices themselves. Rather, it is the apps and the optimized experiences that allow users to experience and do things that were unimaginable just a few short years back. I can pay for my Starbucks and never open my wallet by using the Starbucks app. I can transfer money from my bank and never go to an ATM. I can collaborate with my team on Basecamp while I am not tied to a desk.
What this really means is that many experiences that were built for the desktop originally need to be re-imagined and optimized for the mobile interactive experience in your hand. This is no easy task, and sometime, the entire construct of the experience needs to be re-imagined. Complexity needs to be killed at all costs. Simplicity needs to reign supreme and make the experience pleasant, quick, simple, and valuable to the user. Sometimes this might mean that the mobile version of a site simply has only the core high-value, high-frequency functionality that allows people to get in and do what they want and get out in a very short time.
The fact that most of your audience opens your email communications on their mobile device should make you consider the device on which they will read it. If you are asking them to click a link to do something, make sure that where you are sending them is mobile-friendly. A simple example of this is if you send them a link to take a survey, it better be mobile-friendly and be something that can be completed quickly. Most people have short bursts of free time of 1 minute or less. Such as when you place your order for your coffee, waiting for the train, etc.
When we started SlimSurveys.com, one of the main problems we wanted to solve was the complexity and time required to take a survey, while making that experience very pleasing on their phones. We wanted the surveys to be simple versus complex, and we wanted it to be tap-centric and almost feel like a game and not work. We have solved this problem and now marketers can gather valuable insights and feedback from their customers while these users are on their mobile devices. Mobile has finally tipped and its importance for business will only continue to grow.
Are you doing the right things to leverage this trend for your business?