The pace of creating websites that display on mobile devices has been steadily gathering for a while and is now becoming more important than ever for many businesses to consider.
If your business and website communicates with people on the move, business people who are away from their desk a majority of the time, and the gadget mad brigade, then it is likely that you should seriously consider the advantages of having a website that can be easily viewed with a mobile device.
What’s involved?
The most effective way for mobile website development is the addition of a mobile specific Cascading Stylesheet (CSS). It is likely that if your business already has a website then it will already have a CSS governing how it is displayed on a normal PC monitor.
The difference is that mobile devices require a much simpler functionality. With mobile internet, it’s short and snappy, to-the-point language. You can afford the space to write lots on your full website, but not on mobile, so be prepared to reduce the size of news items, page text and images.
Examples
The BBC has a mobile site that features most of the sections on its main website, but only displays shortened versions of it. A minimal memory requirement is achieved through the use of small images, a limited display of top news items (3 normally display with the option to see more) and very little functionality.
Bet365 has a very simple mobile site that provides the bare-minimum functionality to strike a bet. No images, no in-play, and reduced memory requirement.
Simple functionality has a number of important advantages:
- Page size: Downloading a page that has 2.5MB size images will swallow most users allowances in one go and take an age to download over a mobile connection, whether it be mobile broadband or 3G.
- Screen size: Smaller images and brief text is required so that it can display on your mobile device without scrolling.
- Alt texts, image titles and hyperlink text decoration, usually standard practices with normal web design, are brought back to the forefront in mobile web development.
What else should I know?
- If your website contains Flash: Flash will not work on iPhones and iPads.
- Javascript and JQuery seems to render fine.
- If your website requires other plugins to work, these may not be easily installed onto a mobile device.
Mobile website design seems to be a return to simple display that accompanied web 1.0 in the ’90s. But it’s not just websites that are being developed, applications (or more commonly referred to as “Apps”) for Android and iPod/iPad/iPhone are popular alternatives.
These require custom coding, special development using specific software generating tools, and need licensing to be sold on the Android or iPhone markets.
And finally…
imp-ressions develops and designs front- and back-end solutions for a wide range of clients in every sector of business and has been doing so since 2001.
Mobile website development is a new arm of our business, so please contact us for more information about how we can develop your mobile website.
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