Why creating a cross platform digital experience matters

Photo credit: RC Cipriano

There’s been a lot of talk in the past few years about the “Year of the Mobile”. I first heard this phrase in 2010. We’ve since surpassed that. Mobile communication is now a ubiquitous norm.

Mobile usage is eating into our free time

Rand Fishkin of Moz shared this graphic from the annual Mary Meeker report with this tweet: “Mobile isn’t killing desktop, its killing our free time“.

Mobile is killing our free time via @randfishkin

The blue bar, representing time spent on desktops, has been relatively constant over the past 7 years. In 2015 this was around 2.4 hours per day. It might be higher or lower depending on profession.

Total time spent on digital media has meanwhile doubled from 2.7 hours in 2008 to 5.6 hours in 2015. Instead of replacing time spent on desktops and laptops, mobile usage is increasingly eating into our free time.

There’s also no doubt that “other connected devices” will also grow over time with the advent of smart watches, smart televisions and the internet of things.

Benedict Evans, a venture capitalist from A16z, echoes similar sentiments in his podcast, “The year mobile dominated tech“.

Need for cross platform interactions

Photo credit: Sonja Guina

A lot of businesses are starting to look into cross-platform communications.

They need to be on the web and have both iOS and Android apps. If a user is using one platform (web), they need to be able to communicate with another user on another platform (mobile). Cross platform, according to Wayne Gretzky, is where the puck is going. Despite mobile usage increasing, consumers and businesses are missing what makes each of these media unique.

Higher session frequency & shorter session lengths

Mobile devices are used more frequently. We may look at them a few times in an hour for say, 30 times a day. Hence, mobile devices have a higher session frequency.

Cross platform user experiences

An integrated digital experience

Different uses for different devices

Creating a unified cross-platform experience