by Nick Fotis, Product Manager, Cars.com
Lost amid the frenzy of the iPad’s launch was an indictment of one of its ancestors. The laptop, nearly twenty years old, is no longer considered a “mobile” device. This isn’t news to anyone who’s lugged a laptop (certainly older models) across an airport, but in fairness to the device, while the laptop isn’t as context-friendly as a tablet or smartphone, it’s hardly an anchor.
This contradiction raises a couple questions. First, what qualifies a mobile device? The question was asked at the HMC’s Mobile University: is the iPad a mobile device? The conference was mixed in its replies. Given the uncertainty her, is it fair to not include laptops in this category? We must be fairer to laptops than to lump them in with desktop towers. Perhaps laptops aren’t mobile devices, but are they portable devices? Next, is there enough of an intuitive difference between the terms “mobile” and “portable” for those not immersed in the mobile category (whose understanding is necessary when selling business cases for mobile projects into an organization) to understand?
While not a revelation, attention must be paid. This isn’t a debate about what truly is, or is not, a mobile device. The larger issue revealed is that language standards haven’t made their way to the mobile category. Who else has struggled to find a short, intuitive way to refer their mobile website versus their (wired, www, desktop, full) site?
While rapid mobile adoption is forcing businesses to develop for the mobile channel, how much easier would it be for businesses to adjust if there were, simply, more accurate language standards for the category?
Here are a few areas where I’ve experienced confusion – my own or my conversation participants:
· To the IT crowd, an application can be software that helps a user perform a task. To the business crowd, “applications” now refers native software products that run on mobile devices.
· Applications that frame a website within a shell – choose between hybrid/web/pseudo apps
· iPhone vs. Apple devices – how many times do we say iPhone, when we really mean iPhone and iPod Touch?
By no means are the examples discussed here a comprehensive catalog. Who owns the responsibility to establish these standards? How best can they be communicated? Rapidly changing technology only increases the challenges. Think it’s hard to explain the difference between a native app and a hybrid/web app now – wait until HTML5 makes the functionality impossible for the user to differentiate.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau is doing their best to address standards for mobile, but their hands are full identifying language for advertising products and measurements (no small task). This type of change must happen the grass roots level. Those of us who are responsible for driving mobile strategy within our organizations must not only manage the products, but must establish consistency in the way mobile is discussed internally or to external customers.
As the sole individual dedicated to mobile in my organization, I believe a third of my responsibility should be dedicated to educating my colleagues about the mobile category. Internally, each time I present I spend time discussing vocabulary. With all scorecards and other internal information I distribute, there is a section dedicated to language. In conversations, it’s challenging to remain disciplined. However, it’s necessary. With a customer base that includes over 16,000 dealers, all major auto manufacturers and their agencies, our salespeople encounter vastly different starting points of mobile knowledge. Providing a consistent vocabulary provides a stable base for their discussions.
Have other examples of language challenges with mobile, or how you’re addressing them? Please share them below.
Nick Fotis is Product Manager at Cars.com and on the HMC Leadership Team. He heads the HMC group, “Products/Brands in Mobile,” which provides a ’safe zone’ for managers/marketers to discuss mobile marketing issues without any sell-side interference. You can catch him talking about the importance of mobile at Cars.com at the HMC’s Mobile Marketing event on June 30th, 6pm, in Chicago. Click here for more info and to register.
