Even with the number of mobile web users growing daily, smartphone purchases on the rise, and mobile web usage predicted to soon outpace desktop web access, many websites, unfortunately, are still not adapted for mobile. Failure to design a site specifically for mobile usage—ignoring the wide variety of available applications as well as consumer habits—leads to a poor user experience. The growth of mobile web users offers enormous potential for businesses and advertisers, but only for those who make smart use of the technology and adapt their site to adequately compete in the market.
The most important thing to remember when developing your company’s website is that people interact differently with a mobile site than they do with a desktop site. Since the navigation on smartphone is more tactile, and since users are often engaged in other activities while using their devices, people who visit mobile sites are usually looking for something specific. Unlike the typical desktop site user who may be browsing for information or comparison shopping in multiple windows simultaneously, typical mobile users are on the move, and thus, more goal-oriented in their web usage. They may want directions, pricing, or a quick way to contact you.
A mobile site is 100% different from a desktop site in terms of the end goal, which is why businesses should take the time to develop a mobile site that reflects consumer behavior. And while we are hearing about all the innovative features of new devices like Apple’s iPhone 4, keep in mind that not every phone supports elaborate images and videos or display settings. An effective mobile site, therefore, should be navigable for all users so that it can enjoy as extensive a market reach as possible.
OIR will develop or adapt your site so that it is compatible with advanced features of a smartphone but will work well with other phones, too. This is where device detection can be vital: OIR can design your website with an eye toward how it is viewed on a variety of devices. This ensures that the user experience will be positive for desktop site users and mobile users of various devices.
Redesign Your Site for Mobile
Most companies with extant desktop sites are already tracking some kind visitor data to the site. OIR can determine which types of computers accessing this site, including mobile devices. Analyzing the content that those mobile devices have been most heavily accessing gives a good indication of what mobile users will want from that particular company’s site. This, in turn, helps dictate the mobile content that should be offered.
Using device detection helps differentiate the desktop users from the mobile ones, and we can also use that detection to serve up different “levels” of content. If we detect a device that supports things like CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript, then we can offer a more enriched version of the website. In general, OIR will build a mobile site with high performance and sophisticated visuals for the benefit of advanced devices, but will degrade gracefully on older or more basic devices.
If you haven’t developed a site specifically for mobile, or if your site would benefit from redesign and/or updating to be accessible to the highly variant mobile technologies, OIR can help. OIR is the only interactive marketing company in Myrtle Beach that specializes in email, web, and mobile marketing, and we can create the perfect mobile site for your business.
