Mobile Web sites: Does your business need one?

07-28-2009 • Headline: Web Services

We took a look at the different options when it comes to mobile web sites and came to the conclusion that we needed a separate web site just for our mobile users. This isn’t the case for everyone. Maintaining two web sites can be huge task especially when you’re dealing with a lot of content.

The reason we decided to have a mobile site is our site uses a lot of Flash and JavaScript which does not work with mobile web browsers. But once we had the sites built we found several ways to update both without going into each one separately.

Mobile users don’t want to download the same entire web page that they would on a PC. A mobile device should be treated as a different browser utilizing all the features mobile devices have. Trying to cram the PC thinking into a mobile device just doesn’t work. Mobile devices have small screens and keep in mind the user is on the move, they don’t want to scroll 50 plus times to have to find content.

We also found it very frustrating waiting for large web pages to load and when they did we had to zoom in a few times just to read the print. In our solution we implemented a redirect tool that recognizes the user’s browser and then directs the user to either the main web site (.com) or to the mobile site (.mobi) automatically.

You may have to first ask yourself whether or not you need a mobile web site We’ll here are a few options to consider before you start.

1. Create Two Web Sites (.com and .mobi).

This is a good option if you don’t have a lot of content to deal with and you site doesn't change much. Though you'll need to update both sites when adding content there are tools out there that help make this process easy. You can also have a sub-domain off of your main domain, example: yourwebsite.com and mobile.yourwebsite.com

There are also redirect tools so you can give your customers only one web address and depending on the type of browser they use they're automatically directed to the main web site or mobile. You also have the ability to promote your mobile web site instead of making it a negative. The downside to this option is that cost is higher because you’re essentially building two web sites.

2. Create a Mobile-Only Web Page.

This option is good if your web site is more dependent on mobile users and not dependent on a lot of downloadable content or having flash and other complex features on your page.

By creating a mobile-only web page you will loose features and content that users would normally experience on a PC but taking advantage and embracing the mobile device features and taking the time to creating a good design with easy navigation will allow users to get the best out of both.

Note: Using the link below will convert any web site so it's viewable by any mobile device.

http://www.google.com/gwt/n

3. Create a Hybrid Web Page.

This is good middle of the road option. For one you’re cutting costs by only having one web site but also your keeping a moderate amount of features.

A lot of thought and planning has to go into a hybrid web site as you need to consider both PC and mobile users at the same time. This rings true when developing the navigation, considering the width and height of the page and how much content is on your page limiting the number of images and keeping the size low.

With a hybrid web site you may loose some nice Flash-based or Java scripted features that full blown web site provides, but in the end this may be the best option.