Your website needs to be ready for mobile. Is it?
Of the sites we manage, anywhere between 10-25% of all traffic comes from mobile handsets: smartphones, iPods, iPads, video games, tablets. And the amount of mobile traffic just keeps increasing (mobile internet traffic is doubling every year by some estimates).
Mobile browsing presents peculiar design challenges. A primary challenge of course is that mobile devices have tiny screens compared to desktop or even laptop computers. Stunning graphics on the desktop look, well, small or incomplete, on the smartphone. (Or they take forever to load owing to browsing speeds – another primary challenge). Full-size pages on the desktop cannot be viewed on the smaller mobile device without moving the frame of reference, perhaps both up and down, with the swipe of a finger or depression of a key. The practical problem is that people browsing your site on the go may leave the site more quickly if the site does not render in a visually appealing, intuitive way. If they leave in a hurry, will they come back?
Well designed sites can perceive that the browser is mobile and render a browsing experience designed specifically for mobile devices. A more sophisticated approach may be to render a wholly different experience for the mobile browser. You may determine through an analysis of your site traffic, for instance, that mobile browsers seek out different information on your site, or typically flow through your site differently from desktop browsers.
Good website design delivers the content visitors want, in an appealing and intuitive way. That includes taking into account the ever-growing amount of traffic coming from mobile and handheld devices.
