The Common Thread

I was at the ASAE Technology conference this week, and from the opening keynote to several of the sessions I attended there was a key theme when it came to association technology: mobile.

I actually lost track of the many different sources on the huge increase in accessing the internet via mobile devices, but I think we’re at the point where if you need the proof, your behind the curve. Use of smart phones is going through the roof. Use of PCs to access the internet in some cases is actually going down. The desktop use won’t go away, of course, but if you’re ignoring how your web presence interacts with mobile devices, you’re in trouble.

But the point about mobile internet use that really stuck out for me came from the opening keynote, delivered by Luke Wroblewski. He pointed out that the constraint of a smaller screen has required web designers to have some discipline in their design. They have to limit what they show, forcing them to focus on what matters. This is Southwest Airline’s home page on the web:

A little distracting and all over the place, don’t you think? And this is what their mobile version looks like:

Let me be honest. I like the mobile one. I like that it just gives me what I need. I like that it doesn’t give me a lot of choices. In fact, as a general theme, I’m growing tired of choices. The institutions that will gain my loyalty are the ones who are both smart enough and bold enough to offer me fewer choices.

That’s no easy task. Offering fewer choices requires some really brutal clarity. That’s something that many organizations simply don’t have the discipline to achieve. But given the explosion in mobile use, I think we all better get on the clarity bandwagon too.

This entry was posted on December 9, 2011 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Marketing and Commmunications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.