Mobile more important than desktop for blog publishers

As reported by Joshua Benton (@jbenton) of Nieman Journalism Lab, the New York Times launched yesterday a revamped mobile site.

A simplified design and an experience closer to the Times’ mobile app (this upgrade is for a browser) is what you’ll take away from the revamped site.

The more important message through for you as a publisher (blogging lawyer) is the need to publish for mobile devices, not the desktop.

As Fiona Spruill (@fionaspruill), Editor, Emerging Platforms at the New York Times, wrote last December, it’s mobile first.

In the next 12–18 months, many news organizations will cross the 50 percent threshold where more users are visiting on phones and tablets than on desktop computers and laptops.

In November, 37 percent of all visits to the Times (including to NYTimes.com, our mobile site, and all of our apps) came from phones or tablets. That’s up from 28 percent in 2011 and 20 percent in 2010. When media organizations see numbers like this, they will be forced to decide whether they can continue to put the majority of their digital efforts into the presentation of their desktop report. If you do that, your product, and your journalism, will not be tailored for the majority of your digital readers.

If you put the majority of your digital efforts into the presentation of your content on a desktop, your work product will not be tailored for the majority of your readers. Wow.

For you, as a lawyer or law firm, this means one, focusing on mobile first, desktop second, when it comes to blog publishing. You can’t be guided by the past. Sure, you may have more people reading your blogs or other content on a desktop today. But that will not be the case for much longer.

Two, if you are a blogger, you absolutely have to start consuming your content on mobile devices. Otherwise you lack an appreciation of how content is presented on mobile. You’ll be unable to understand the needs of your readers.

How do your posts appear on an iPad, an iPhone, Flipboard, Zite, or Flipsy? How does other content appear on those applications? How can you make your posts more appealing, not only via your blog publishing platform, but in your use of imagery and formatting?

I publish my blog on an iPad, review my posts on an iPad, and share my blog posts on social media via mobile apps such as a Feedly or Flipboard. I also consume all of my content on an iPad and share relevant content from my iPad or iPhone.

I do this because the reading and sharing experience is a more enjoyable and a less time consuming one on mobile. Investment is no longer being made in desktop apps for consuming and sharing — and its showing.

The use of smartphones and tablets for reading content will dwarf that of laptops and desktops for reading in the coming years. It’s already a 50-50 proposition.

Publish for the future – on publishing platforms designed for mobile, and with an appreciate of an effective mobile work product.