We're currently plowing through projects where we're going completely Mobile First and learning a lot about mobile-specific interactions. Building those interactions can spark engagement for products across many devices. This is one of the many reasons we completely rewrote Foundation 4 to be Mobile First. But what if you already have a product? Do you need to rebuild it, like we had for Foundation? Do you need to start from scratch?
Absolutely not! It is possible to bring a mobile-first strategy into your existing products by building specific interactions. Just as we have with our app, Notable, when we created its new feature NotableGo. We didn't rebuild Notable from scratch for mobile. Instead, we built a mobile-first component within it.
Tap into your Mobile-First Potential
We've recently wrote that your emails should be an extension of your app, providing people with valuable content and not forcing them to click.
However, with significant traffic coming from mobile we have to ask ourselves, "What if people want to click over?" If they do, and we want them too, we need to complete the mobile experience from end-to-end. That's easier said than done if you already have a product built and being used daily. But what if you don't? It's still possible to build a mobile-first experience and leave the rest of your product intact. It's what we did with Notable.
What we built allows our Notable customers to have a complete mobile experience, from email notification to using the actual product. Once you decide whether or not to take an action on a notification, you can do so right away. This means your team won't have to wait for you to log into Notable from a desktop.
Create an Independent Workflow
The reason we didn't need to overhaul Notable was because the interaction — from email to specific Notable post — was only related to those customers coming from their inbox on a phone. Once they click "View and Reply," they'll be sent to a strictly mobile version of the post, and be able to leave a comment or join the discussion.
This interaction could only be done in this specific circumstance, so we didn't need to think of a desktop counterpart. It already existed.
Mobile Specific Interactions Remove Unnecessary Clicks and Increases Engagement
In just a week after launching our new NotableGo feature, we quickly saw a change in behavior. We saw from referrals to post pages from mail clients, such as Gmail and Yahoo, that visitors bounced around the site 65% less often on their mobile devices than their desktop counterparts. In other words, they came from their email did what they were supposed to and left. They didn't poke around and do other things, which is what we wanted them to do.
It was clear that our mobile-specific interactions were working as intended. We wanted people using the app to utilize their email notifications as a task list, spending time on a specific task and then going straight back into their email.
Building a specific mobile-first interaction on top of your existing app is a great way to boost engagement and future proof your products. We don't expect everyone to reinvent their products. We aren't going to completely rebuild ours either, but that doesn't mean we can't make adjustments and iterate as we move forward.