Mobility vs Mobile First

A few weeks back I heard a group of digitally minded people talk about the question: “what mobile first means”. I think it was a bit of an unfair question given that most digital agencies would base their answer on experience and not objectively on the trend or pattern, they are in business of making money, mobile first websites are big money at the moment.

Nonetheless, the responses where as expected, that mobile first means, you design your content with the understanding that your audience will engage with the content on their mobile phones. 

While I agree with the approach to designing the content to fit mobile I don’t think the core of the question is answered.

Mobile first stems from the concept of “mobility” – if one were to take this view then answering the question becomes less about the device and more about the client.

The core of mobility is the changing needs of the client, through the advancement of technology consumers are more than ever empowered to be connected with the world around them and have ability to choose the lifestyle products they believe add value to them.

Mobile first should go back the phrase “Your brand should be where ever your client is and on whatever connected device your client chooses to use.” This would then mean that knowledge about your consumer becomes that much more valuable. Knowing that your client watches a lot of TV means that you can customise content for TV and deliver an richer experience, the medium (TV) is secondary, the client (the preference of TV) is the focus.

That being said, many at the managerial level would pipe up and say well, isn’t that a massive amount of work for generating content. Sure, that may be so, but think about the alternative, – what is the engagement model for a client reading the same content on a website, then a mobile site, then your app, then on TV… you get the picture.

Content should be complementary across mediums, making it easier and better for client experience, not necessarily easier for the author or content developer.

So what does mobile first mean – it should mean mobility in your mind. It should mean that tomorrow if Apple invented the protector watch, then your approach to engaging with your client will be to be on that device in the correct format with the correct content, not the piece you wrote for web.