Mobile Web Design

Something you may consider when opting for a new website is whether you need a mobile version as well. A few years back this probably wouldn't have even been an option as mobile phones didn't have colour screens, let alone the capability to surf the web.

However, with the introduction of the iPhone, the Google backed Android operating system and other leading manufacturers such as Nokia and RIM (Blackberry) all making major improvements to their mobile web browsers, the mobile web world has taken off.

So do you need a mobile website?

This all depends on what the purpose of your website is, although as things stand in most cases the answer is likely to be no. All of the websites we produce are built to web standards, what this means is not only do they work in all of the browsers on laptops and PC's but they will also work on compliant mobile browsers. Also, with mobile displays and resolutions getting better all the time standard websites are becoming more visible and functional on mobile devices.

So are there benefits to having a mobile website?

The main benefit of having a mobile version of your website is that it is designed to be useable on these smaller displays. Although your mobile browser will probably display most of the websites you visit, the chances are you will have to constantly zoom in and out in order to use them. With a well designed mobile site this would not be necessary and navigating the site would be a much easier task.

The other benefits of mobile sites are they can feature low graphic designs to speed up loading times over slow 3G connections, they can also feature mobile specific features such as the ability to call a telephone number or add it to your phonebook.

The biggest adopters of mobile websites have tended to be the large ecommerce shops such as Amazon, these sites would be very difficult to use on a small display so they have created much easier to use mobile sites.