2001 was the year of mobile.  Then it was 2002.  Then 2003.  And then 2004.  And so on.  Until 2010, when the CEO finally broke down and bought an iPhone and decided to visit the corporate website.  The horror!!!  Our site doesn't work!  Urgent email to the CMO: "Make our site mobile friendly!".

Sound familiar?

Some companies have "mobile friendly" figured out.  You remove the Flash movie from the homepage, create a one column page layout template, and perhaps simplify the navigation.  This usually satisfies the emergency CEO email.  But perhaps its time to think about mobile differently?  Instead of starting with the desktop browser version of the website and figuring out what to remove, perhaps start with mobile first?  The Mobile First ideology was first laid out by Luke Wroblewski.  He advocates for a new approach to design that starts with mobile at the core.  His three primary points are:

1) Mobile is exploding 

Luke made this point in late 2009 and its even more true today given consumers insatiable appetite for all things smartphone and tablet.  It's clear that mobile is well past the tipping point of consumer adoption, and has forever changed computing.

2) Mobile forces you to focus 

While expanding screen resolutions and increased browser capabilities appeal to designers and developers, often the net result is a website that resembles an episode of Hoaders, with distracting content, unnecessary links, and an overall poor user experience.  Just because you can doesn't mean you should.  Instead, Luke argues, the user experience should begin with the most important audience, the users.  Designing for mobile first requires a minimalist, zen-list approach to design that focuses on the key tasks users hope to achieve.

3) Mobile extends your capabilities 

Today's mobile browser goes well beyond the native capabilities of most desktop browsers.  For example, iOS and Android devices provide real-time location information via integrated GPS.  iOS Users swipe and touch instead of point and click.  Newer Android devices support "Near Field Communication", providing news ways to connect mobile computing to the physical world, like sending payments or even replacing the traditional hotel key.  Marketers have a massive opportunity to leverage mobile device capabilities to drive new levels of engagement.

Companies like Google, Facebook, and Adobe are already on the mobile first bandwagon.

"We're just now starting to think about mobile first and desktop second for a lot of our products", Kate Aronowitz, Design Director Facebook.

"We really need to shift to start thinking about building mobile first.  This is an even bigger shift than the PC revolution", Kevin Lynch, CTO of Adobe.

If you'd like to learn more about the concept of mobile first, I'd encourage you to join a webinar I'm co-presenting with Morehead State University on the Mobile Revolution.  Click the image below to register and view a video preview of the webinar.  Let me know what you'd like to hear during the webinar in the comments.