Mobile Myth #1: Functionality is King; Experience Doesn't Matter

By Tim Knudsen: VP, Product Management —

To help those responsible for their companies' mobile initiatives better understand the topics that organizations face today when rolling out their mobile sites or apps, we will discuss commonly held beliefs in an effort to separate fact from fiction. Here's the first in our mobile myth buster series.

I've spent time with a number of our customers discussing their mobile strategies — current and future. To borrow from Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Julie Ask (their lead analyst on all things Mobile), the common theme is the 'only certainty is uncertainty.' This seems to apply to larger strategic decisions about version support (when do I end support for iOSv3?), platform support (how much should really be invested in Windows Phone? Blackberry?) and channel (what features should be ported to Mobile Web? To the iPhone app?).

Yet one thing is clear — experience (form) doesn't follow function. For your customers, they are one and the same.


Image source: www.customerinput.com

When I was living the dream (read: pre-wife, kids and mortgage) and studying architecture at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, I was intoxicated with the purist edicts of le Courbusier (among other things...). I can still envision hovering plains of concrete centered on a spiral staircase positioned for easy entry, leading to exposed living areas with peripheral views of the surrounding landscape. Great living functionality. And also a great living experience. He got it.

I will admit that I cringe when I hear that a company's first priority is to figure out the next feature(s) to build. When I ask about how the experience is being measured and managed for mobile apps and mobile sites, it is clear that this is too often an afterthought. Yet, your customers have spoken. Filled with the expectations set by their shiny and slick iPhones and savvy Androids, your customers have very high standards for the mobile experience you deliver. In fact, a Harris survey on Mobile Experience found that 85% of online customers expect their mobile experience to be at least as good as their experience on a "fixed" web site. (Harris Interactive 2011 Mobile Transactions Survey)

You thought you had 10 years to get mobile right, like you had with the fixed Web? Think again... Visa sponsored a survey conducted by Mercatus and found that mobile has more of an impact on a consumer's decision to select a bank than availability of online banking, access to ATMs, or nearby branches (Mercatus LLC Study, 12/2010)

Managing the experience must go hand-in-hand with feature investment decisions. Just making a feature available does not guarantee your customers will complete the journey you'd intended for them. And just tracking their actions by tagging screens is not enough. This leads me to another certainty — your customers will use your app in ways you never expected them to. You need visibility into their behaviors. You need to discover their paths, their text inputs and their behaviors — without the inconvenience of having to define everything you would like to track in advance. You need to know where your customers are succeeding, where they are struggling with your mobile services and what you need to do to make things better.

My final words of advice — it is certain that managing the customer experience on the fixed web will lead to business success. It is uncertain how long and how much pain will result from ignoring this truism for your mobile services.

Comments

[DJ]

I think the way you have framed this myth is incorrect.

Functionality is as much a part of "the experience" as anything else. "The experience" does not exist without either content or functionality, and hopefully both.

The big leap that people have to make with mobile has more to do with "utility" - ie is this function *worth having* in a mobile context rather than whether the experience is up to scratch. That's the big debate for me.

DJ