Last month, we released a mobile version of our reporting site. Our clients can now get real-time stats about their operation on their phones. The site is simple. On the Call Center side, it returns total minutes, total number of calls both inbound and outbound, average call length and number of emails answered. On the Fulfillment side, it returns orders shipped, orders at the warehouse, orders on hold and backorders.
As a designer, I love simplicity. Designing for mobile devices is satisfying because their small-format demands simplicity. The mobile reporting site isn’t robust, it isn’t super granular, it’s a quick snapshot of your business at a given point in the day. And that is its strength.
This is a quote from Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, on how he uses the micro-blogging service:
“I definitely spend way more time reading tweets than writing tweets. The first thing I do in the morning when I’m waking up is, I reach over and grab my iPhone and I just start scanning through tweets. What it does for me — I know right away that if something big is going on, in the world or in my area, someone will have tweeted about it. If nothing big is going on, at the very least I’m being reminded that people are up and doing things. For me, looking at tweets first thing in the morning is kind of like caffeine. It sort of makes me realize other co-workers are up, getting coffee, driving to work, etc. I better get out of bed. All through the day, I’m checking Twitter and seeing what people are saying about certain things. I’m clicking on the trends and the sidebar to figure out why this particular celebrity or phrase is in the trends right now. And then I’m tweeting maybe once a day, maybe every couple of days. I’m an infrequent tweeter. I’m more of a consumer of the information that’s coursing through the system.”
You can find the full article on NPR.
I think the big potential for the mobile reporting site is similar to what Biz describes above. A quick update in the morning gets your brain going before you caffeinate. It lets you know if anything out of the ordinary has happened. Because it’s so quick to access, you can check the mobile reporting site throughout the day. As you do that, you begin to develop a sixth sense about your business. You know what to expect, when to expect it, and you begin developing an intuition on how to optimize it. As you start testing new strategies, the mobile reporting site allows you to track their effectiveness quickly and efficiently.
If you’re a One World client, you can access the mobile reporting site by pointing your mobile browser to m.owd.com Log in with the same username and password that you use for the One World Extranet. If you have any questions or suggestions for making the site better, please get in touch.
Matthew Wyne
Creative Director