Mobile-Friendly or Nothing: If It Breaks on a Phone, It’s Dead

The Airport Lounge Failure

It is Friday afternoon. The deadline for the signature is 17:00. The Client is traveling. She is in an Uber. She has 5 minutes between calls.

She taps the link you sent. It opens a login page designed for a desktop mouse. The fields are tiny. She tries to type her password. The page zooms in weirdly. She can’t find the “Submit” button because it’s floating off the edge of the screen.

She gets frustrated. She locks her phone. “Too hard. Send me an email.”

Now you are back to insecure email attachments. You broke the chain of custody because your interface failed the Thumb Test.

Mamma mia. We pride ourselves on being “agile,” yet we deliver work that is as rigid as a stone tablet.

The Blocker: The “Desktop Bias”

Consultants live in a bubble. We sit in front of dual monitors. We have high-speed fiber internet. We see the world in 1920x1080 pixels.

But the Deal Room does not live in your office. It lives in the real world.

• The Network: Clients have 2 bars of LTE.
• The Device: Clients use iPads, iPhones, Androids.
• The Context: They are distracted, tired, and in a hurry.

If your portal requires a plugin, or a specific browser, or a mouse hover interaction, it is broken. If your Excel sheet has 50 columns and no freeze-panes, it is unreadable on mobile. If your PDF is in landscape mode with size 8 font, it is invisible.

This is “Desktop Bias.” It is arrogant. It assumes the client will adjust to your preferred environment. No grazie. You must adjust to theirs.

The Ship: The Mobile-First Deliverable

We need to redesign the access point for the lowest common denominator: The Smartphone.

1. The Login: It must support FaceID or a simple magic link. If they have to type a 16-character password on a virtual keyboard, you lost them.

2. The Vertical PDF: Stop loving landscape slides. For the “Read-Ahead” deck, use a vertical format. It scrolls like a website. It is natural. They can read it with one hand while holding a coffee.

3. The Summary Layer: For every complex Excel model, creating a “Mobile Tab.”

   • Big font.
   • Key KPIs only.
   • Traffic light coloring (Red/Green).

   They check the Mobile Tab to feel good. They forward the file to their analyst to check the math. But they give the approval based on the mobile view.

4. The “No-Download” Rule: The file must render in the browser. Do not force a download. Downloads disappear into the file system of the phone. Preview is power.

When the client can click, view, and approve while waiting for their luggage, you have won. You have removed the friction of “place.”

Make it mobile. Make it fast. Get the Sign-off.

FAQs

Can you really do deep work on a phone?

No. But you can do 'Approval Work.' And that is the only work that matters for closing.

Does this mean I have to simplify my models?

It means you need a 'Summary Tab' that fits on a screen. Keep the complexity, but deliver the insight simply.

What if the portal isn't responsive?

Then change vendors. *Subito.* A non-responsive portal in 2025 is negligence.