MobileNow feedback and next steps

MobileNow and MobileClassic launched in May and has been a source of passionate feedback from our fans.  I wanted to outline how we innovate and what some of the decisions were for our mobile platform.

I view the key to successful innovation is three straight-forward phases:

1. Build it
2. Get feedback
3. Improve it

We were intensely disappointed with every college mobile site and app we could find.  They contained very little information, and often was little more than what you'd find in an RSS feed.

Our goal became to build a mobile platform that would let you get to everything.  There were two big challenges here.

Most people would anticipate that the amount of information on a mobile screen is the problem, but the bigger challenge is the navigation. There are almost no standard ways users expect to navigate (compared to traditional websites), and the premium of space and links being big enough to use a thumb means you are very constrained.  Sports sites are atrocious at putting too many links on a page, so this is a conflict.

We solved this with a team-driven navigation and the standard navigation and used pop-up navigation and expanding areas of the screen.  This balanced performance, navigation, and the number of links.

The other major problem is that Blackberries could not easily do what we needed with navigation.  While it's been very hard to explain why there are two mobile editions, we considered it a top priority to give a functional mobile site to Blackberries and other phones without modern browsers.

We launched MobileNow and MobileClassic in May 2010 to 3 sites and showed it at the conventions.  By the start of the school year, we had 50 sites live with it and were getting more feedback.

Once the school year started, the feedback began to flood in.  It has been passionate and wonderful.  Some people are convinced we are showing too much information.  Some people are convinced we are showing not enough information.  Some people want it turned off.  Some people are upset they don't have it yet.

They are all right.  Here are the main changes we are working on now:

1. The scores are being moved up and featured more prominently.  The news should still be top of fold, and the photos will compel you to scroll down if you want to see more than the latest scores.
2. Secondary navigation will get better and not wrap lines as we will move to a drop-down for the additional items.
3. An optional site-wide "information links" navigation will be added at the bottom of the pages.
4. We will allow users to switch between their mobile edition and the regular website.
5. We will incorporate auction bidding into MobileNow.

We hope to have all of these done this month, though as each feature is built, new challenges may appear, and we will get more feedback.