In the early-mid 2000s if you wanted your website to render properly on mobile devices its was absolutely essential that you had a mobile version of your website available, as the internet browsers of that day and age were completely incapable of correctly rendering a website.
Fast forward to the present and you will find any smart phone now fully capable of rendering any website. This has given business owners a false sense of security, with their rationale being: “it renders on my mobile just as it does on my desktop, so I don’t need a mobile website at all, obviously”. While understandable, this rationale does not take into account several important aspects of the user experience. Let’s discuss four points which will upset the user experience when viewing a normal website on a mobile device.
One: Drop-down menus do not function
On normal websites in order to make a drop-down menu reveal itself all you have to do is mouse over it, however on a touch-screen mobile device this functionality does not carry over, and drop-downs will not work. Therefore the mobile website needs a completely re-thought navigation.
Two: Navigation buttons are not easily clickable
When you access a normal website on a mobile device you will see the navigation buttons however they will be infinitesimally small and difficult to click on, requiring continual zoom-in. This is far from ideal. Mobile websites will have very large and simplified navigation.
Three: Excessive zoom-in required
In order to make text readable, click on links, select text, fill out forms etc, zooming will be required nearly every time. And will have to be repeated for each new page you load. A mobile site has its content area simplified and enlarged allowing immediate readability.
Four: Interactive features break
Interactive features such as video, animation, etc behave unpredictably on mobile devices, sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. Therefore, if your interactive features have vital information, you will need to have it reformatted (into text and images) in order to make it more friendly for mobile device users.
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