I spend roughly 1hr on public transport each day to get to and from uni. I use my phone as much as the next person on these joyful trips. So I figured, why not write a post using purely mobile tools and see if I can maintain the visual and layout standard which I expect across all devices while still writing relevant content. Whenever I'm using my phone on these daily trips I like to scroll through my twitter feed and read articles people have linked or get some work organised for uni. If a site I go to isn't optimised for mobile, it's immediately frustrating. I'm generally interested in or need to work with the content I click on so I don't leave the site straight away but most consumers would before the wasteful download of a banner ad even loads.
So why, as a producer of content would you want to inconvenience or frustrate your consumer from the get go? You wouldn't, and even though it's just pinching the screen to zoom in, that's the mobile world we live in. We expect easy to read, use and navigate user interfaces, and if we don't get these it annoys us.
There is no question that we use our phones in excess and that it's a key platform to communicate and interact with consumers. But the fact there are still non-mobile optimised sites is pretty shocking. Even my simple free WordPress theme has an inbuilt mobile version, and it looks awesome. I shouldn't be impressed with mobile sites. They shouldn't wow me that a company displays their content in an easy and convenient way to navigate and read, but it does.
So if you have a blog yourself or a website and it isn't mobile optimised, then why not? It isn't hard to do and it will reduce that "bounce rate" marketers hate so much. Most likely the only effort it takes it ticking a box that says "optimise for mobile devices" and you're in business.
What's your experience with mobile optimised or non-mobile sites? Any sites that have gone a step further and done something different?
Also, this WordPress mobile app is pretty good! Almost easier than writing and formatting on a computer. Can you tell the difference?