Mobile web design

Mobile phones have been at the centre of our lives for a long time. Recently though, they’ve taken a new turn.

Accessing the web is now a reality on smartphones, which have seen an incredibly rapid increase in market share. In fact, they’re now outselling desktop PCs, and it’s expected we’ll be accessing the web more from our mobile devices than anything else by 2013.

Similarly, tablets such as the Apple iPad have made such an impact that they are now a serious consideration for anyone with a web presence.

Mobile is becoming increasingly important to your business. Over the past three years, mobile traffic has doubled year-on-year, to the point that in some sectors, it is expected to be reach 30% of traffic this year (2012).

And although published statistics put smartphones in the pockets of 30% of the population, our own research suggests that this is more like 75-80%.

That’s a large market to ignore.

What do you have to do?

A lot of businesses with websites make the mistake of thinking that their existing website works OK on mobile phones. In fact, many websites do indeed ‘work well’ in terms of technical functionality. Smartphones now have fully featured browsers and they’ll play with all the current browser scripting standards (apart from Flash) to bring us complete experiences on the small screen.

However, small is the keyword.

The screens are so small in fact, that most desktop sites are unreadable when delivered to their tiny screens. And certainly, you will find that carefully crafted ‘conversion’ pages, will suddenly stop converting on mobiles.

There’s no doubt that mobile commerce is here to stay, and if your business is to capture that increasing market, it needs to address its mobile strategy.

And that’s where we can help you. We approach mobile from a strategic, rather than technical, angle.

Sure, we’ll use technical tools to build your mobile site, but we’ll find out what your customers are doing whilst mobile before laying a line of code.

And there’s no formula for that. Different businesses will have different needs, it’s up to us to show you who they are, what they’re doing, and how best to respond to them.

We believe that approaching mobile in this way will give your business a better chance of succeeding.

App or web?

There are two ways of delivering your mobile content: through the web on a mobile site, or through an app.

And if it’s through the web, should the website be separate from your desktop site or part of it?

Again, the decision should be based not on technology, but on how your mobile audience uses your mobile content. Sometimes your website content will serve your mobile audience well. Other times, they will need different content, and how it is delivered will be an individual consideration of each project.

Other useful articles:
Navigating the mobile maze by Boagworld
Native apps versus mobile websites: three simple rules by Econsultancy