Why you need a mobile site for your business

A cursory examination of your normal website on a mobile browser (such as that of the iPhone) may lead you to believe that you don’t need a separate website tailored made for mobile phones as more likely than not your website will display just fine on iPhone’s Safari or Android’s Chrome. But is it really fine? Let’s examine a few points so as not to miss the big picture.

Rendering

Just because your normal website displays with no design errors or anything ‘broken’ does not mean it is now acceptable for the mobile web. If opening your normal website on a mobile device should require you to do any zooming at all (Be that finding text, or links, etc), you need a mobile website. The mobile website experience should require no zooming, and data should be presented clearly and be readily in view.

Streamlined Navigation

Conventional website navigation is not adequate for mobile websites. More often than not they are too small and require zooming to access. Mobile website navigation is big and usually located at the top or bottom of the site, with buttons that span the width of the browser. This enables fast and user-friendly access to your website’s pages.

Bandwidth

Depending on your data plan, you may or may not be concerned about accessing a website that takes a considerable amount of time to render. However, in the spirit of user-friendliness your website should not be a bandwidth hog as it will not only cost your users more in money and more in time. And that is one thing users find most perturbing. Thanks to their light-weight design mobile websites load lightening fast, creating an ideal user experience.

Flash

If your website has Flash (SWF files) then you most certainly need to create a mobile version as Flash is no longer supported by Apple devices which means users won’t be able to see or interact with your Flash content. Instead you need a mobile website which users the technologies of HTML5 and Javascript.