Sunday, December 26, 2010

Mobile Usage Of Your Products May Change Your Product Strategy

I met a friend who works at eBay, the auction site, yesterday. She shared an interesting story with me. eBay, she said, was slowly moving away from being an auction site to a fixed price online store such as Amazon. Then something interesting happened. eBay product designers and engineers created a mobile version of eBay.

People who use the mobile version of eBay started participating in auctions more than fixed price purchases. This behavior may influence eBay's product strategy, she said.

I find this remarkable. But I am not surprised. eBay auctions mobile brought the adrenaline rush of competition and gaming to you no matter where you are. Users were willing spend more time and pay more money for the experience of competing against each other to get what they want and were willing to pay more for the experience.

I firmly believe that mobile delivery will significantly alter the expectations and behavior of your users.

For designers of enterprise software, particularly human capital management software, this is a great opportunity. This is an opportunity to think mobile first, rethink your software as a tool that helps to connect people and move ideas from person to person rather than move documents from desktop to desktop.

I am cautiously optimistic about the possibility of enterprise software that people would actually enjoy using, may be even look forward to using.

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