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Should Your Website Be Mobile Ready?

July 14th, 2010

Openness: FaceTime

photo credit: myuibe - If Steve Jobs knows two things, it's the iPhone and how to get a crazy good deal on buying black turtlenecks in bulk.

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

It’s not a huge stretch of the imagination by any means to realize that mobile devices are quickly becoming the wave of the future for browsing the internet. With the ability to access the billions of web pages on the web from the luxury of your phone or hand-held device from anywhere on the planet, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the trend is becoming so popular.

Let me throw some quick statistics at you:

  • 100 million. That’s the number of Blackberries sold to date.
  • 85 million. That’s the total number of iPhones and iPod Touches that have been sold as of April 2010.
  • 3 million. That’s the number of iPads that have been sold in the last 80 days.
  • 1.7 million. That’s the number of iPhone 4 units alone that have been sold since launch on June 21st.

Not even Gene Roddenberry himself could envision this kind of technological takeover. Then again, maybe he could. But while we’re all walking around with our phasers and faces set to stunned at those numbers, there’s a definite need to open our eyes at the evolution of websites.

Star Trek Convention Binghamton William Shatner 2003

photo credit: zaphodsotherhead - "THIS. IS. HOW. I. TEXT. LEONARD. NIMOY."

So why is it such a big deal to make my website mobile ready?

It’s important to note that much like your desktop computer or laptop, mobile devices can use a variety of different web browsers, all of which display web pages differently. For example, your laptop may be running Internet Explorer or Firefox, but any mobile Apple device (including the iPhone, iPod or iPad) uses Safari. When developing your website, make sure that it is fully tested in a variety of web browsers to make sure that your clients can see the same information from your site whether they are on their desktop machine at home or on their Blackberry in Bangladesh.

Check out this article for a more in-depth look at the browser wars and what to be aware of.

Another key fact to take into account is that mobile Apple devices can’t run Flash and they have no plans to develop such a technology any time soon. This means that if your website is running any Flash elements, be it an animated banner, menu, intro animation, or perhaps the entire site itself (God forbid), anyone that arrives on your website on an Apple product will be awfully disappointed.

What else can I do?

If you’ve taken the few precautions outlined above, then you’ve pretty much covered the basics, but that’s not to say you can’t go a little bit further. Many larger websites are beginning to develop mobile-only versions of their websites. For example, if you visit ESPN, CNN or Facebook on a phone, you’ll notice that you’re presented with a stripped down version of the information you want to see, without all the bells and whistles of the full website. This is done, of course, to save on real estate since the screen on your phone is restricted to just a few inches. If users want more information, they can either continue browsing the mobile-only website, or visit the main website.

Many website business models are also realizing the potential of iPhone applications. As of June 2010 there were 225,000 apps in the Apple App store. These apps range from everything from games to finance to books and more. Apps aren’t restricted to just Apple products either. Blackberries and Google’s Android phone are also developing their own apps. Many websites are now developing these mobile programs that allow their users to easily access their accounts and streamline the whole web browsing process on mobile devices. This includes shopping, updating their profiles, watching videos, etc. It all makes for better usability and an overall better experience in mobile web browsing.

Now that we’ve given you a small glimpse into the present and future, if all this mobile development stuff still seems over the top or out in left field – contact Point.Click Media. Captain Kirk will thank you.

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Posted in General News, Web Tools on July 14th, 2010

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