Most people in New Zealand now use mobile phones and
tablets to browse the web*. Combined with Google's decision to
optimise search in favour of mobile friendly websites, it would
seem that there is no doubt that a mobile optimised website is now
essential.
You can test
whether your website has basic mobile friendly features
here on Google.
While many websites work reasonably well on tablets, websites
which use Flash or have fixed size elements can be frustratingly
unusable on iPads and iPhones. In addition sites which load slowly
because of un-optimised images or javascript will be abandoned by
mobile users as they take to long to load.
Responsive Web
Design is a way of making the web page look different on
different sized screens - if you look at this page on a smart phone
or tablet - the layout is different for each screen size, making
the website usable and readable at each size.
User Experience is even more important for mobile websites, in
fact according to Annie
Sexton usability and page load speed are
the "two important facets that should drive your
decision-making."
"1. Usability trumps
aesthetic. When developing for mobile sites, because screen
real estate is limited, it's important to focus on the ease of use
over a pretty interface. It may not make sense to have every single
navigation item visible on smaller screens. You'll need to
prioritize the elements that are most vital and make them the most
prominent and easy to find.
2. Make performance your numero uno
goal. Despite how fast our mobile devices are these days, it's
still important to build for slower connections. Let's not forget
that "fast mobile devices" are limited by the networks to which
they connect. 4G is restricted to modern countries in dense urban
areas. Most of China is covered in 3G, and the same goes for India
and many other developing nations all over the globe. Regardless of
the connection, when users are on the go, laggy websites will be
abandoned. Load time should be short and snappy."
http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/design/responsive-or-bust-googles-focus-on-mobile-how-to-design-for-it
Mobile friendly websites are not 'one size fits all' projects.
For very complex websites, it can be useful to have a simplified
template for smart phones.
Hybrid mobile apps can offer the best of both
worlds, a downloadable app with native functionality on the iPhone
and Android, and easily updated web pages showing within the app. A
combination of an iPhone app with specially formatted webpages, the
app takes advantage of functions on the iPhone, and accesses web
pages to provide easily updated information in a format that works
well on the phone. The web pages may be used by other mobile
devices and standard browsers, or specific to mobile only.
If you just landed on this page, an introduction is in order.
Phosphor is a mobile web development company based in Auckland.
Find out more about
Phosphor, or contact us for a meeting in person or via
Skype.
Give us a call or
fill in the contact form if you would like to look at how
your website can be improved to work with smartphones.
*Mobile phone internet usage increased 104 percent from June
2016, to 6,453,000 gigabytes in June 2017. This is around 1,700
megabytes for each mobile phone connection, compared with
900 megabytes in June 2016.
NZ Government Statistics
