We’ve all heard of the ‘mobile first’ mentality, persisted by quotes from tech giants such as Dr. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, who said, “If you don’t have a mobile strategy, you don’t have a future strategy.” We recently saw this go from concept to practice when Facebook unveiled its newly designed news feed, which was heavily influenced by mobile design.
Facebook has more than 680 million unique, active viewers on a monthly basis as of their last quarterly report; a demographic so large it certainly cannot go unnoticed or un-catered to. In addition, noting that the new design was mobile-inspired was something executives made sure to point out during the release. “In the big picture, what it’s saying is that the mobile experience—both on smartphones and on tablets—is starting to affect the way people are expecting to be presented with information and interact with information because so much of people’s time these days is spent on mobile devices,” says Roger Katz, CEO of Friend2Friend, Palo Alto, Calif. This means that because people are now utilizing their mobile devices (phone and tablet) as the primary access points for information, they now expect to have a similar experience to when they do log on from their desktop or laptop device.
Facebook isn’t the only brand that’s moving quickly to create enhanced customer experiences for mobile users. Best Buy executives recently stated that investing heavily in the mobile consumer experience will be one of the key focuses for the brand; Best Buy has planned capital spending between $700-800 million during the current fiscal year.
