Many users are mobile-only
This may be hard to wrap our nerdy heads around, but there are a lot of users out there who only use their phone to view the internet! That's right, there are hundreds of thousands of people for whom their smartphone phone is their one and only computer; it's the only way the can access content on the web. As digital professionals, we need to consider those users. If you're in the healthcare space like I am, consider those mobile-only users trying to access healthcare information on their phones. Are we making it easy enough for them?
Think of it from the ethical perspective: is it ethical for us to create content that's easy to engage with for people who sit in front of larger screens every day, but not very easy for people who don't own a laptop or desktop computer? A more extreme way to put it: is it ethical for us to create content that's easy for educated professionals to access at their desk at their corporate job, but not easy for a cashier or a contractor or a truck driver to access on their phone?
Think of it from a business perspective: do our clients want the business of the mobile-only audience; those people I described above? They absolutely do.
As digital professionals who sit in front of a computer every day, it's easy for us to forget that these mobile-only users exist. Our clients may not even be aware they exist. We mustn't forget about those users, and we should educate our clients about why they're an important audience; once they think about it it's an easy sell. All of our digital work should reflect this. I'm a broken record with this, but once again, creating our work with a mobile-first approach is the way to make sure we're meeting our ethical responsibilities, and providing the best possible results for our clients.
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.