Websites for Mobile Devices

The mobile web is a growing market sector and any company who do not have a mobile enabled version of their website are missing out on good and ever increasing numbers of potential clients. An Ofcom report of March this year showed that around 12% of all website visits come from mobile browsers and this is a big increase on the previous year, a fact that fits the statistics we get from Analytics reports from our own and clients' websites. Around 40% of all adults use their mobile phone to browse the Internet some of the time and this figure rises to over 70% for 16-25 age group.

So what are the key points to consider?

• Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod) currently have by far the biggest share of the mobile web market
• If you have any Flash on your site these devices do not show it (without a bit of jiggery-pokery)
• Mobile screens are generally smaller so a mobile enabled website should take this into account
• Mobile users do not generally want pages and pages of content but a simple site with key information
• Mobile phones allow people to ring direct from your website with a simple click if coded correctly

How is a mobile website constructed? There area few options:

1. Responsive design, where a website stylesheet will respond to the device and/or screen size to serve a version of the site that fits the device screen and may even hide some content for mobile devices like tadwebsolutions.co.uk
2. A completely different version of the site served on a special domain such as tadweb.mobi
3. A completely different version that is automatically served to mobile devices on a subdomain such as m.futureroofs.co.uk

The latter solutions is our preferred option and this week we have created the mobile version of the website of a flat roofing company in South Yorkshire, Future Roofs. There main website looks like this:

This now redirects to a mobile version of the site based upon screen size and or mobile device type to serve the website at m.futureroofs.co.uk.

A nice clean and simple version maintaining branding with a simple click to call action button.

We're also working on a much bigger mobile project which took up a lot of time last week, but is not yet in the public domain (and won't be for a few weeks), and this includes animation and will work in an app-like manner on all devices.

So what are you waiting for? Contact Tad Web Solutions for a great mobile website.