I have recently sat in meetings where the content specialist seems to believe that mobile content should be dumbed-down or at the very least shortened.
I’m not exactly sure where this idea has come from but I have a feeling that it has something to do with the size of the screen dictating the length of the content and/or the level of intelligence of the user. This is a massive assumption backed by very little research or understanding of the user, user experience with their mobile devices and any knowledge of the data and mobile operator relationship to the user.
Let’s break this down.
Handsets
For some odd reason the term “mobile” has become synonymous with the word “iPhone” and/or “smartphone” in recent months. This is a huge mistake when building for mobile.
The definition of a smart device needs to be broadened and we need to get a better understanding of what we’re dealing with.
Below is a graph which illustrates quite nicely which handset manufacturer controls the African market. The answer in short: Nokia.
The basic premise to remember here is that once a user has loaded up your piece of content, the chances are they won’t navigate away unless the receive a phone call. Why? Because most of the devices out in the market aren’t able to effectively multi-task. Even considering the iPhone should make you think about this: If you shift from the iPhone browser, to an app and then back to the browser, very often the page will force a reload and make the user not only lose their place on the page but have to reload the page and spend more of their airtime doing so.
The short: Users tend stay where they’ve chosen to be until there’s nothing more to read, so give something more than 2 stupidly strung together sentences.
While at the Mail & Guardian as the head of the mobile division we discovered that mobile users were reading longer articles and staying on the page longer than on desktop. This is a surprising and seemingly counter-intuitive trend.
Data Costs
Something that is is often overlooked when created mobile content is the cost to download the content for the user.
Firstly, how big is the page where the content lives? Is the logo optimized for a mobile device? Is the background image a 1mb download? If so, you are putting your content at risk simply by ignoring the environment in which you are serving the your content.
Secondly, how big is the image that you have in the content? Are you trying to be flashy or pragmatic? Do you even know what pragmatic means on a mobile device?
You might argue that a user on a smartphone will download a large application simply because they use a smartphone. But what about the cost of the data to use your very large and data-intensive mobile app or website? Just because the user has the device doesn’t mean they can afford the data.
The other major part of the equation is the cost to browse away from your content to seek further reading on the topic. Mobile-first (and only) users have proven to be hungry for knowledge. Don’t starve them of this right because your instinct tells you that they want less to read. They don’t want to spend another R0.50 to load another page with another heavy logo so they can continue reading the next 500 words. Just put the words on the page.
Focus
I’ve long believed that desktop users (me) are easily distracted and have the attention spam of a three year old high on sugar. When considering a mobile audience you need to be cognisant of the fact that they are a focused market. If a user is on Mxit, they often will stay on Mxit and click off only if the content to click to is extremely engaging and valuable.
This applies to your content. If you provide the user with sufficiently engaging content they will stay. You don’t need to dumb down or shorten the message for a mobile device, you need to format it properly and engage the user correctly.
Context is king
Now I’m not saying that every story should be 10 000 words long. I am saying that context is king and if you do not understand the context of the user, their device and the cost implications of their mobile experience then you are probably serving them the wrong content, at the wrong time with the wrong length.
