The Churchill Club of Silicon Valley just held one of its most popular events: the Annual Top Ten Tech Trends Debate. Five prominent venture capitalists (Steve Jurvetson, Vinod Khosla, Josh Kopelman, Roger McNamee, Joe Schoendorf) were on the panel. With some participation from the audience, this group presented ten trends that they think will have major impact in the next 5-10 years.
What I thought was most interesting about the list was that out of the ten trends they suggested, four of them had to do with mobile phones/devices. All four of those predictions revolved around the proliferation of Internet connected smartphones and how they will affect our lives as consumers, as well as the mobile market as a whole.
It seems likely that these predictions are driven in large part by the success of the iPhone. The iPhone is really the first phone that people have used to browse the Web in significant numbers. More importantly, the iPhone allows users to easily view standard Web sites, rather than scaled down mobile versions. This is a key feature for many iPhone owners – and carriers and other device makers are taking notice. AT&T, for example, is expanding their high-speed data network in anticipation of higher levels of Internet traffic. Samsung is now advertising their new iPhone rival, which features a similar browsing experience.
What does this mean for site owners? Clearly, a growing portion of your visitors will be viewing your site on a mobile device (in fact, for some of our clients, the iPhone version of Safari is already in the top ten browsers showing up in their log files). These users will not be looking for a mobile version of the site, they will simply use your normal site. However, they won’t necessarily have access to all the tools that they might on a regular PC. Screen size, though more generous on these devices than with standard phones, is still limited. Navigation will be somewhat more difficult since they won’t have a mouse. Even applications that we now take for granted, such as Flash, may be missing (the iPhone, for example, does not support Flash at this time).
What this means is that, more than ever, your site needs to be usable, and accessible. The navigation and calls to action need to be clear and easy to find. A mobile user who is out and about is easier to frustrate than a user who is browsing from home with time to figure things out. Mobile users will be even more likely to try somewhere else if they can’t get what they need from you on the first try. These visitors represent a great opportunity for almost every business on the Web. Don’t let it pass you by.
