Do you need a mobile strategy?

It’s an interesting question and one that defies a straightforward answer: do you need a mobile strategy?

This stickler has been picked up by Will Critchlow, writing on the Moz blog. Why is the question in the title of this blog so tricky? Part of the answer, according to Critchlow, is the fact that mobile phones and computers are becoming more alike. Mobiles are growing larger screens; computers are becoming touchscreen. So why bother to optimise your site for either when, ultimately, it may not matter?

For more than a decade Critchlow says he has been living in the ‘year of the mobile’, but for the first time it seems the issue has been hacked at the knees:

There’s something going on that I’ve referred to as there’s no such thing as mobile. What I mean by this is that consumers are seeing less and less of a distinction between their devices.

Not convinced? According to research by Google and Nielsen Life, some 77% of mobile search happens either at home or work – in other words, in environments where there are larger, more traditional computers. Importantly, this 77% is not on the go and in demand for fast information; rather, they just prefer to use their mobile phones.

Ok, so content should be legible on a small screen, but a mobile strategy implies a whole new approach to content predicated on the assumption that people are on the go. For content marketing, this implies lean, cut-down articles that can be easily digested without much pain. The only problem is that people aren’t, en masse, really ‘on the go’ in the sense that they’re actively walking.

So the only strategy that matters is to make your content presentable across different devices. As Critchlow says:

There’s no such thing as mobile as far as the user is concerned. Which means you, as marketers, have to work exceptionally hard to play nicely with ubiquity.

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