We are pleased to announce the launch of a new mobile website for Brookdale Senior Living (BKD), the nation’s largest owner and operator of senior living communities throughout the United States and a leading national provider of senior-related services.

Having already worked on several projects together, Brookdale (BKD) came to us to develop a mobile web property that would complement their dynamic, information-rich website, enabling on-the-go visitors to search community listings and find information about any of its 554 individual senior living and retirement communities. Through the collection of online requests and easy-to-update info about their broad array of service offerings, Brookdale also looked to this new mobile site as a tool for their sales staff.

With these goals in mind, we worked to create an extensive mobile solution that offers the ability to quickly access Brookdale’s database of 550+ communities, including a video gallery where guests can view videos on both iPhone and Android platforms. Tasked to find a solution that would integrate within the site’s content management system, we created a request feature that communicates directly with the community databases and into the sales teams’ inboxes. The resulting mobile site provides an overall user experience that has exceeded client expectations.

In today’s world, mobile websites are a necessity for any organization or business. Dan Sinker professor of Online and Mobile Journalism at Columbia College Chicago, explains why in part 3 of our mobile series. (Catch up on Dan’s thoughts about mobile advertising here.)

EIM: What are some of the key characteristics when developing for mobile web versus developing an app?

DS: [When developing] for the mobile web, you’re taking your normal web-development skills and considering how they scale down to a much smaller screen. Developing for an app—one reason why people like developing apps is that the user interface stuff is really fun. I’m beginning to think that the right approach is to do both at this point.

If I’m on the web on my phone and somebody links to something on the Tribune, my phone doesn’t say, “Oh, you have the Chicago Tribune’s app loaded, now let me load up to that, let me find that content that was just called and present it to you in that way.” It doesn’t work that way. Instead, it links me to the Chicago Tribune’s website, and suddenly I’m looking at this huge, bloated, awful desktop website. What is the point of that?

Have a mobile site no matter what. We’re at a point now where you can’t not have a mobile site. Well, we should be at that point. It’s impossible to predict how someone’s coming into your site now. For all the sites that have built apps that are really nice, they still need to have at least a mobile view on their website, so that content isn’t lost when someone’s on a mobile device. You’ve got to have it.

Sit tight for the final and most fantastic part 4 of 4—thoughts on mobile browsing and desktop browsing. Until then, see Dan conquer Twitter.

If ever anyone appreciated the internet, it’s Dan Sinker, publisher of the late Punk Planet magazine. Now a professor of Online Journalism at Columbia College Chicago, Sinker also runs CellStories.net, a “daily dose of awesome” viewable only on mobile web. In the midst of finalizing plans for his fall Mobile Journalism class—the only course of its kind in the country, at the moment—he shared his thoughts on the current mobile landscape.

envisionit media: You’ve said that one shouldn’t make an app unless it needs to be an app. When is an app applicable?

Dan Sinker: If all you’re doing is presenting information to a user—that does not need to be an app. You get more into the need for an app when you have to access things that are specific to the device. [Last year], if you were making a leading-edge mobile thing, you might have well made an app, versus a website, because the only thing that was getting onto the mobile web by a huge margin was the iPhone. But now that’s much less true.

At this point, Android is on this crazy tear, it’s 25 percent of US mobile web traffic now. The iPhone—all the i-Devices that count together—accounts for just over 50 percent. You’re talking about a good half of that now is Android, whereas, a year ago, it was less than 10 percent.

So, suddenly, if you’re making an app, you’re making a conscious decision to support Thing A, and not Thing B—or Thing C or D or E or F. The mobile ecosystem is gigantic. It’s ‘I’m supporting this thing,’ and you’d better have a pretty good argument for why, or you’d better have something somewhere else. There are plenty of good reasons to make an app, the main one being discoverability is much easier. That’s the reason the App store was successful to begin with, is that people think to look in an App store for something on their mobile phone. We don’t do that on our computer at all. You’re just going to type in the information [into Google] and get it.
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The envisionit media brand is now alive and well on the mobile web. If you haven’t seen it yet, get out your fancy phone and take a look (the new mobile site is currently limited to iPhone and Droid visitors only.) The site features a mobile-optimized version of this here blog, a teaser-style version of our portfolio, and the basic nuts and bolts about who we are and what we do. So, go check it out–and let us know what you think!