Advantages of having a Mobile Optimized Website

In the forever accelerating World Wide Web, it is vital to keep up with the latest advancements, especially, for a business to remain cutting edge. Since its inception less than 16 years ago, the web is a completely new landscape. Today, the web is fast moving toward the mobile web.

With 3G and 4G technology, more and more people are using the net and accessing mobile web sites on the go via their iPad, iPhone, Android, or even their eBook readers. Mobile website is not the conventional web site. If a web site is not user friendly when accessed via a mobile device, customers simply will not use it. It’s that simple! A good web designer remains up to speed with these innovations and is able to implement this knowledge into the web design and maximizing traffic to any web site and mobile web site by making it more accessible which, in short, means making the business more money. Building an ecommerce mobile website is an investment that will put any ecommerce business on the fast track to success.

If a business is not mobile friendly, they are losing countless customers daily. To give an example, in June 2010, according to comScore, Alexa and Flurry Analytics, people were spending on average 64 minutes per day online while mobile web use was at 43 minutes per day. Contrast this to just one year later; in June 2011 and see that mobile use has overtaken regular Internet use. The figures are now 74 minutes for regular Internet use while mobile web use has sky rocketed to nearly double the amount of just one year ago. Mobile use is now at 81 minutes per day!

It is also very likely that over the next year those figures are going to increase further as more and more mobile phones and devices are being introduced in the market allowing more and more people to access the net wherever they are.

Without looking any further, it is already evident that the mobile web is overtaking the regular web and this increase as Tablet PCs will and cell phones will improve. It will be interesting to see how the internet will develop over the next decade. But even now the statistics speak for themselves.

Facts

• 74 million consumers in the United States alone are already shopping from their mobile devices (Source: InMobi study, 2011).
• 13.1 million consumers are accessing retail content from their mobile phones.
• Nearly two-thirds of those consumers or 8.2 million are visiting mobile commerce websites (Source: comScore/Millennial Media Mobile Retail Study, 2011).
• In the U.S, 24% of adult online iPhone users and 21% of Android users have used a shopping application in the past three months (Source: Forrester, 2011).
• Even from home, 59% of consumers are using their phone to perform mobile shopping activities.
• 28% even use their phone in the retail store to perform mobile shopping activities (Source: 2011 Experian Study).
• 31% of consumers first research a product from their mobile device before buying it in-store and 40% percent of consumers are researching a product from their smartphone before purchasing it online (Source: JiWire Mobile Audience Insights Report Q1 2011).
• U.S. mobile shopping sale volumes are predicted to reach $9 billion in 2011. (Source: InMobi study, 2011).
• This year alone retailers plan to spend $220.9 million on mobile ecommerce (Source: Shop.org and Forrester Research report, 2011).

It is clear that shopping from mobile devices is not a phase but, truly, becoming the way to shop in the continuously changing Internet world. This makes mobile web design not just helpful but very much a necessity that any hit web designer must acknowledge and offer.

Because many of the devices that display the mobile web are small, simple web design is essential for a mobile web site. On the larger screen, you can design more elaborate and stunning looking web sites, however, for the mobile web site, a more basic and simple experience must be provided for the user. The content on the mobile web site must be precise, clear, to the point and easy for the mobile web user to read the information they are searching.

So, in essence, two versions of the same web site must be designed and you will need to factor this into your web design cost. It is going to cost you more money if you have someone other than yourself design your web site, but clearly, having someone who can create mobile web design will maximize your traffic flow and become worth the extra cost. Depending on what you want your web site to offer people, it is likely that both versions; the mobile web design, and a regular web design will be required.

More and more people are using the Internet and this usage will continue to increase thanks to faster speeds and easier access. With this easier access, more and more people will be shopping on mobile web sites. Jumping on board this fast moving train is the one of the wisest decisions a company can make toward future success.

Although, your web design cost is going to increase, your potential client base is also going to increase and quite substantially! The Internet really is the best place to get your message out to potential customers and mobile web design is the way to go. It’s the way of the future! The question is, are you are ready to profit from this great opportunity?

Is Your Website Ready For the Coming Tablet Explosion?

If the vast majority of analysts and pundits are to be believed, 2011 will be the year of the tablet, and the popular adoption of the devices won't stop there. In a recent report, Forrester predicted that tablet sales could quadruple from 2010 to 2015, leading to a surge in tablet-based e-commerce and chipping away at the amount of Web traffic coming from PC's.

Many site owners are already seeing a huge uptick in users browsing from tablets, and that upward trend will continue. Is your company's Website ready for these visitors?

Test Your Site on a Tablet

Using your own site on a tablet computer is the only way to get an accurate idea of what other users experience when they browse your site from such a device. The iPad runs a modified version of Safari, so if your Website works in that browser on desktops, it's probably fine on the iPad, but there's no guarantee. Weird issues with the layout may crop up out of nowhere. A JavaScript file could misfire.

Don't own an iPad or another tablet computer yet? Borrow one. Walk down to the Apple Store if you have to. At the very least, check to make sure your site's design and functionality are intact.

If you're desperate, you could even download Apple's iOS SDK, which comes with a desktop iPad simulator. There are a few Web-based simulators, but these are not reliable, because they are still using your desktop browser's engine to render the site.

Simplify the Layout

Even if your desktop site's design renders properly on tablets, that doesn't mean the battle is won. If simplicity is important in standard Web design, it's even more critical in designing for the iPad and similar devices. As a rule of thumb, strip out any elements of a page's layout that are not absolutely essential. Consider dropping that three-column layout for two columns. In many cases, cleaning up your site's design for the benefit of tablet browsers will have the added advantage of making the desktop browsing experience better.

Keep in mind some of the unique features of the tablet form factor. Users swipe and touch rather than scrolling and clicking. They can turn the device on its side and the browser will flip accordingly. You can use CSS media query declarations to adapt your site's design depending on the device's orientation. You could develop a different design entirely for tablet users or simply make your site's user experience one that meets desktops and tablets halfway.

Ditch the Flash

This one almost goes without saying, but if you haven't rethought that Flash-based navigation menu or site introduction, now is the time to scrap it. Apple has made clear its stance on Flash, which will probably never be support by iOS. While Android does support Flash, so far the experience of trying to load Flash content on Android devices has not been impressive.

No matter where you stand on the mobile Flash debate, it's hard to deny that more open standards like HTML5 and JavaScript can accomplish most of what Flash does. And while the Flash experience on Android may improve over time, Apple's iPad is overwhelmingly dominant in this space for the time being, so we have to play by their rules, to some extent.

Check Your Form Fields

One aspect of a desktop site that's worth keeping a close eye on is its Web forms. Whether they're used for a simple contact form, newsletter sign-up or an e-commerce shopping cart, forms are an important part of the user experience, especially for business sites. Broken or poorly formatted form fields can lead to frustration for users, who will abandon that sign-up form or shopping cart without a second thought.

To see what the experience is like, try filling out the forms on your site from at least one tablet, preferably an iPad since that's what most people are using at this point. Do the fields render clearly? Is the process tedious? If there any form fields that are not absolutely necessary, get rid of them. For formatting issues, use CSS to tweak the appearance of form fields. If it becomes necessary, you may want to consider looking at a third party form builder like Wufoo, which also makes customizing the design of Web forms a breeze.

Make the User Interface App-Like

One of the icons I tap most frequently on my iPad's home screen is not for a native application at all, but rather the mobile Web version of Gmail, which looks and feels a lot like an iOS app. Google has done an especially good job of adapting their existing Web services to the mobile and tablet form factors, and they do so using HTML5 and JavaScript.

If your technical resources and budget allow for it, consider building a tablet-specific version of your site that utilizes some of the more app-like interface elements like subtle animations and a navigation that responds to finger-swiping. This kind of Web app can be the most enjoyable to use, and your users will appreciate it.