Newsletter #134 A Mobile Version of your Website

Created on Jun 24 2009 12:00AM

Feature Article

Accessing the Web on a mobile device is a daily activity for over 22 million Americans according to comScore, American consumer behaviour analysts, with slightly less than one in three of those with Web-enabled phones using them in this way according to Netpop. Perhaps more importantly, comScore found that there was an increase of 107% in this usage between January 2008 and January 2009.

Apple’s iPhone has accelerated mobile Web browsing and according to usability guru Jakob Nielsen “… is the first mobile Internet device worth criticizing.”. 17 million iPhones have been sold up to the end of 2008, with around another 4 million expected to have been shipped in the first quarter of 2009.

So what are these American mobile owners accessing on the Web? In order of importance:

1. Any news and information
2. Entertainment news
3. Accessed social networking site or blog
4. Traded stocks or accessed financial account
5. Accessed movie information
6. Accessed business directories

Users with Web-enabled mobile devices seem to becoming more reliant on their mobiles to access time-dependent information on the move. As phones and wireless networks get faster and more reliable, people are using their mobile device as a way of quickly finding information when they don’t have access to a laptop or desktop computer.

So should you have a mobile version of your Website?

1. Does your site get enough traffic? At least 5,000 unique users per month is probably a good minimum level.
2. Does your Website provide time-dependent or regularly changing information?
3. Google Analytics Web statistics can track usage from any mobile and other operating systems that support its JavaScript. Currently this includes such devices as the iPhone, Android phones, Playstation 3, Playstation Portable and those using some versions of the Opera browser. Check your Web statistics to see if there is any demand.
4. Would it look good as a PR exercise and attract new users?

In theory because of the vast variety of mobile devices, from plain cellphones that can access the Web via a tiny screen, through to smartphones and big screen phones, you should build two mobile versions. However according to Jakob Nielsen the only realistic option is to have one mobile version of your site that caters to the high end phones and appreciate that the plain cellphones will be served rather poorly. The reasoning: Plain cellphones provide such a poor Web browsing experience that few owners use them to access the Web anyway.

If you are going to build a mobile version of your site should you simply strip back and simplify your current site? Well no – building a mobile version of your site requires a completely different mindset. Think along the lines of:

• Very few small graphics or none at all
• Task-driven design – what are mobile users looking to do on your site? Everything else is superfluous.
• Easy-to-click buttons for navigation available throughout the site

Your company may not need a mobile version of your Website right now. However because of the acceleration of mobile Web use, you will need to have mobile devices in mind sooner than you think.

Hot Tips

Newbies

If you're using Internet Explorer (the one developed by Microsoft and denoted by a blue E) you might want to make sure you're not using Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). In Internet Explorer go Tools/About Internet Explorer and check the version number. The thing is that you can actually skip the next version and go straight to IE8 which has better security, stability and a number of other features. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/worldwide-sites.aspx

Power Users

One of the big advantages of using Firefox is the huge range of add-ons that you can plugin to make your browsing experience faster and better. The folks at Mozilla have revamped the whole add-on section to make it easier to see the huge number of add-on options. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Interesting Sites

tr.im is a great tool for cutting those great big long Web addresses to something that is far more manageable.  Great if you want to send someone a link or you're a Twitter user. Also comes with an extension for Firefox and a dashboard widget for your Mac, and they have more extensions and tools in active development. tr.im also offers statistics so you can track your tr.im URL's visits: when they happened, the visitor's location, the referring website and much more. http://tr.im

InsiteFul Quotes

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." Abraham Lincoln

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page of www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

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Best wishes

Alex Garden