Mobile is becoming more important.
Yet it's still not even close to the most important thing you should be worrying about right now.
Not unless you're in Nigeria, Somalia, Ghana or another country where mobile makes up a significant chunk of your web traffic (like 40%+) or you're targeting an audience which primarily access the internet via mobile. There aren't many of these audiences yet.
If you excuse the hype, mobile accounts for 8.46% of internet traffic in North America. It's risen by about about 0.8% in the last year.
Perhaps these figures are wrong. They certainly vary by demographics. Younger and tech-savvy audiences will have higher %. On this blog visits from mobile account for 9.73%. Our clients in professional sectors have mobile visit rates of 7.13% – 9.12%.
Perhaps the figure will rise quickly. But I think we can agree it wont be crossing the 30% – 40% region any time soon.
Focus on actions, activities, and platform changes which will have the biggest impact for the majority of your audience. Mobile apps, and customized designs are nice to have but wont be essential for a while (almost certainly not before your new site update in a 2 – 3 years time, and by that time who know what best practice might be?).
Focus on the big things. Sustaining decent levels of growth. Increasing the level of activity. Developing a strong sense of community. Proving the value of the community internally.
