This is a quick counter argument to a link that seems to have been doing its rounds on Twitter today. The link in question is a page full of screenshots by Narrow Design of some fairly large agencies’ websites as viewed on a mobile, in this case iPhone, browser. It’s clearly making a point/taking the piss that a lot of these big names haven’t bothered designing a mobile friendly site. Here is my defence (yes, defence) of those agencies…
The link: http://www.narrowdesign.com/future/
Anyone who runs/owns/works in an agency will know that the last client is themselves. The company site is the last one to get attention, behind those of the clients who pay and keep your agency afloat. As such, it’s fairly common (and almost a given) that your agency site will be somewhat behind, always needing a makeover ‘when we’re quiet’.
Mobile browsing has only taken off pretty recently. It’s no surprise to me that these agencies simply haven’t got round to redeveloping their site in this short time-frame. It’s just not going to happen, it’s a big undertaking and a large opportunity cost to any company. Splitting off a team of developers to work on an internal project is a big move, which means that you need to be fairly financially safe to do so.
This in itself then turns the mockery around somewhat—a company that busy that it’s not got round to rebuilding its own site is, if anything, a good agency.
Of course, this excuse won’t fit all the agencies whose screenshots have appeared in the list, but it’s a seriously valid excuse. Further still is the fact that a lot of the sites don’t offer a non-Flash fallback, but the issue there is not with mobile development, but rather with accessibility in general.
The page is admittedly very tongue in cheek, but I don’t think agencies not building mobile optimised sites is really grounds for publicly calling them out… or is that just me?
By Harry Roberts on Thursday, September 16th, 2010 in Web Development. Tags: Agency, Mobile | 14 Comments »
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Josh Nesbitt said on 16 September, 2010 at 11:50 am
I think if anything the point of the showcase was to highlight the failed attempt to even provide any sort of accessible version of a company website at all. I’m not sure that the lack of time excuse is valid here. Surely when you *do* get round to doing the company website you do it properly?
James said on 16 September, 2010 at 11:54 am
That’s pretty much what I thought when I saw the list. I also noted that it’s pretty much all agencies who have flash sites. I wonder if that’s also part of the reasoning behind not updating?
Justin said on 16 September, 2010 at 1:06 pm
I thought the same thing when I saw the list yesterday. I work at an agency as well, and I know first hand that the “last client is themselves.” However, mobile design is nothing new, even the iPhone has been out for more than 3 years now, and that definitely was not the first to browse the web, just the best at the time.
It is incredibly easy to build a mobile website these days, and for agencies that are as large as some on that list, it really is inexcusable that they do not have a site that works on a mobile device. The “last client” excuse can only work for so long, and 3 years is more than enough time for these agencies to get it together.
Jonathon said on 16 September, 2010 at 4:15 pm
The lack of mobile accessibility demonstrates just one important shortcoming of designing a purely flash site.
Others include totally removing access for people using screen readers (those with impaired vision) and people with flash not installed or blocked.
Not to mention the proprietary format, lack of access for SEO, not using web standards and generally reducing usability on the web.
I wrote a short rant about this here: http://www.arctickiwi.com/blog/22-10-reasons-why-we-hate-flash-on-the-web
Harry Roberts said on 16 September, 2010 at 4:16 pm
@Justin: Although mobile browsing has been around for some time, it’s not been of widespread enough uptake to make mobile optimisation viable for the same amount of time. Mobile browsing has been around a while, but not on the scale it is now.
I also agree that it’s not difficult, but I can still see why it might not have been done by an agency just yet… Ridiculing/noting that someone hasn’t seems a little harsh and unfair to me.
Ken said on 16 September, 2010 at 5:14 pm
All true and valid points.
Just as a side note – it the agency or agencies in question stuck with standards then their site would be visible on any device.
I’m not a web developer anymore, but back when I was I would make sure and view my site with links (lynx) on a Linux box or with cygwin just to make sure if would gracefully fall back to something readable. I didn’t have millions of visitors, but I still wanted to be accessible to anyone and anything.
Requiring certain browsers and only working with certain plug-ins may or may not make them someone you want to work with.
Mark Hall said on 17 September, 2010 at 10:02 am
2 thoughts
1. Unless it to impress a potential client there is not much point in making your agency site mobile friendly. There is only a tiny propotion of traffic from mobile.
2. Internal projects always come last, if we had time to build a mobile site, that would mean we would already have a site that were happy with, be on top of all projects, on top all of internal marketing projects or in a failing business that has time to mess around / waste on this type of project.
Jim Moran said on 17 September, 2010 at 10:11 am
Like Josh, surely the bigger issue is not the lack of a mobile site, but the lack of any site whatsoever, without Flash?
One of my biggest frustrations as an iPhone user is that mobile sites are forced on me when I don’t need them. The BBC mobile site was brilliant when I was using a Nokia N95, but the iPhone is more than capable of viewing the more featured “desktop” version. I have to frustratingly choose this version *every* time I visit.
Harry Roberts said on 17 September, 2010 at 10:33 am
As stated in the second-to-last paragraph:
To call a site/agency out over its mobile optimisation (or lack thereof) is far different to calling it out over its accessibility. The issue here is not whether it should work on an iPhone, but that it should have a non-Flash fallback. Mobile is irrelevant here.
@Jim: I wholly agree on the forced mobile point. The worst one is Twitter’s insistence that I should be served their mobile site on my iPad! Or this was certainly the case last time I checked…
Harry Roberts said on 17 September, 2010 at 10:40 am
@Mark: Mobile traffic is at a surprisingly high count at the moment, and ever increasing. There is a point in an agency optimising their site for mobile, as with any site. It can only ever be a good thing.
However, I believe that not having a mobile optimised site is not actively a bad thing.
It’s good if you have the time/ability/resources to do so, but not something you should be berated for not doing so.
Dan Martin said on 17 September, 2010 at 10:41 am
Aside from everything else, self-promotion by finding fault with the work of competitors should be a last resort. If an agency is any good then it should be able to stand alone on the strength of its client work without having to point out what other agencies don’t do. Personally I would steer clear of any company or individual that promotes itself by attacking others.
Drew McLellan said on 17 September, 2010 at 10:55 am
I don’t think this issue is about designing for mobile at all. It’s about designing for the web.
One of the big selling points at the launch of the iPhone (and I’m mentioning the iPhone here as that was the device used in the tests) was that real websites just worked. No need for a dedicated mobile site at all. If these agencies had real websites, then they’d have no problem.
The issue is that they don’t have websites. Instead, they have an HTML page with a Flash movie embedded on it. Rather than working with the web, they decided to work against it. Unfortunately for them, they gambled and lost.
These big agencies who think it’s ok to deliver their clients a Flash movie instead of a website are either going to have to change or go out of business. Either is fine. At the moment they’re simply dinosaurs, except not as appealing to 10 year old boys.
Ian Thomas said on 17 September, 2010 at 11:06 am
I agree with Dan that side-swiping at other agencies to promote yourself is poor form.
I’m a big fan of Flash sites and there definitely is an issue with the lack of a decent HTML fallback for those sites, it’s something that I try and insist on for all flash work that I produce and these guys should definitely have had something in place to cater for non-flash enabled browsers.
To be perfectly honest, I saw the post and thought ’so what?’ I wonder how many people will ever end up on an agency site using a mobile browser – surely you’d only ever do that to find contact details? I can’t see anyone seriously browsing for an agency of the size of the ones mentioned (with the budgets you’d assume was needed to work with them) on their iPhone/Nexus One/whatever.
If it was a site with huge traffic such as the BBC or whatever I’d be concerned, but I don’t think there’s any need to call out agencies that haven’t optimised for mobile.
Dan Metcalfe said on 17 September, 2010 at 12:46 pm
I’d say it would take comparatively little effort to (at least) serve up some contact details for mobile browsers. Sure you may be too busy in the next three months to dedicate a day or two of extra resource to your own site, but will you still be saying that in six months, a year, …?