In Walter Isaacson’s new book, Steve Jobs, he illustrates Jobs’ unique ability to craft products that people emotionally connect and engage with. No shock there; the iPod, iPhone and iPad have been some of the most successful product launches in history due to the fact that the actual device draws you in and engages you. It creates more of a connection and gives you the type of access your desktop could never provide.
In a recent article by Steve Nash on Mobile Insider, he makes the point that the mobile web (phone and tablet) is what we have wanted all along. That is the ability to access from where we are—not where our desktop is or where we can open our laptop.
Our mobile devices, according to Nash, are fixing what the traditional web had broken over the years; engagement. This can be seen through the metrics of early apps like GQ in which engagement approached the hour mark per issue. This type of time spent was traditionally how long people spent perusing the pages of the actual magazine (because they could pick it up and take it with them to multiple places). However, when it came to the web, if the time spent averaged a quarter of that it would be a success.
Nash goes on to point out that the desktop and traditional online experience is the most uncomfortable of all our various media platforms; I couldn’t agree more. What this new generation of devices like the iPhone and iPad do is give us back the control over where and when we shop/browse/read/watch/listen; on the couch, on the train, during our lunch break, at Starbucks, wherever and whenever we want.
This realization that people actually enjoy these types of media will and should make us all reconsider how we go about engaging users online, knowing that where we want to go online is from our mobile devices, not our desktop.
While I can visit a number of real estate websites from my desktop and see the same properties on all of them, what I want is the ability to pull them up on my iPad while in a neighborhood or thumb through the streets of that neighborhood on Google maps to see the other houses in the area and how they’re kept from the comfort of my couch. Real estate consumers are no different than the magazine reader who has swapped the printed pages for the app because they can still turn the page and take it with them on the train.
Put your brand in the position to engage consumers the way they want to be engaged by rethinking your approach on the devices of today—mobile devices.
