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Friday, October 26, 2012

Start Planning for Push to Mobile


So your organization has created, or plans to create soon, a stripped-down mini version of your web site to accommodate the tiny screens of mobile devices. That’s not enough, according to a new report from Forrester Research.

The report, Why eBusiness Pros Need a Five-Year Plan, says mobile-optimized web sites should be considered just “a pragmatic starting point.” Consumers will expect more—and soon. Organizations, whether commercial or institutional, should begin planning now to offer more mobile-enabled services and transactions by 2017-18.

As Mobile Marketer points out in its article about Forrester’s report, more people are latching onto smartphones and tablets to help manage many aspects of their personal and professional lives no matter where they are at any given moment. These mobile users want their devices to handle a wide variety of tasks, which means they need more than just simplified web sites.

The article says organizations will have to build their own mobile apps in order to provide the tailored services consumers will need, noting, “Strong mobile-first strategies are likely to involve native apps that can tap into a device’s technologies, as opposed to browser or hybrid apps, which are less able to support different capabilities of mobile phones.”