Nah not a selfie my legion of millennial subscribers - your website!
One of my first gigs was a site refresh. On the big screen (PC/Mac) the site looked OK, but on the phone not so much. Title cut off, menu broken, navigation elements missing, key content left out, layout incorrect. Not only is the screen real estate on a phone (or tablet) considerably less but there are different patterns and layouts people are used to on mobile. Swiping anyone?
Safe to say 50% or more of the hits you get will be on mobile and that first impression will determine if potential customers will bother to give your site a visit on the big screen.
Another layout to be aware of that's often relevant to your small business is email. If you depend on email campaigns or newsletters make sure your email looks the way you want it. Different browsers and email clients can introduce further variations depending on how you're doing campaigns. Mailchimp for instance will give you previews on different platforms so run the numbers and for example if you find that 50% or more of your subscribers are on gmail - make sure to test it out before you ship the final.
PDA - Nah not Public Display of Affection - Personal Digital Assistants!
While I can’t quite remember life before smartphones I found this bad boy tucked away amongst a box of cables and it brought me back. Behold the iPAQ H3650 Pocket PC - genius branding right? Actually, it’s kind of crazy how close Compaq marketing came close to the now ubiquitous iPad/iPhone branding - maybe Apple was paying attention? Regardless, this little guy was the pinnacle of PDAs 23 years ago. This was right around the middle of the PDA era which came to an abrubt end with the iPhone in 2007. It was preceded by the Apple Newton, Palm Pilot(s) and my favorite because of their colorful translucent cases the Handspring Visor.
Lack of wifi, crummy sync software, no touch screens (this iPaq rocked a stylus) kept PDAs in the geeky device niche versus the massive market smartphones enjoy today. Kinda like wearable virtual reality tech today …
Depending on where you get your stats there are over 6 Billion smartphone users in the world today or about 75% of the worlds population (!)
There will be a next thing but that screen you hold in your hand isn't going anywhere soon - so make sure your site and any other digital assets you are serving up for your biz look simply STELLAR on the small screen.