Do I Need a Mobile Website?

I’ve been asked quite a few times over the past few years about “mobile” websites. By using this term, most people mean a website that can be viewed on mobile devices (cell phones being the most popular device), and usually they’re asking if their site can be viewed on a mobile device, or if a site could be built for them that can be.

With more and more people owning phones with data plans and internet access (just go to any place with a bunch of people, and take note of how many of them are using their phones), it’s no wonder that website visitor statistics from mobile devices are growing enormously. Just think of how many people you know (possibly including yourself) that have an iPhone, Blackberry, Android phone, or some other “smartphone”. All of these people have the ability to browse the internet right from their phone, and nearly all of them do (and a lot more than you may think).

So, it makes sense to make sure people can find and access your website with their phone, right? I’d tend to think so. The good news is that more than likely, if you have a website, people can already access it on their phone. The browsers on most phones these days are very similar (in terms of rendering the look of a website) to your desktop computer, so if you want the bare-minimum accessibility, you probably already have it.

Does that mean you should stick with the bare-minimum, though? That’s up to you, but I’d like to suggest that you at least read on and learn why it may be a good idea to make your site a little more mobile friendly.

I must point out, before I continue, that one kind of website that won’t work on nearly all phones right now is a Flash website. Mobile phones do not currently support Flash, and some manufacturers, like Apple with their iPhone, have stated they never will. If you have a Flash website, you’re mostly out of luck when it comes to mobile devices right now. There are also many other reasons why you probably shouldn’t have a Flash website, but that will need to be a whole other article.

Like I mentioned before, visitor statistics for websites are showing that people are visiting more and more websites with their mobile devices. According to statcounter.com, people visiting websites with mobile devices has grown nearly 200% in the past year. While that’s a good increase, it’s only going to go higher with more and more smartphones becoming available, and more people renewing their cell phone contracts and getting great deals on these phones.

With these trends rising, there will be more focus placed on mobile websites in the upcoming months and years, and you’ll need to decide whether you want to follow suite, wait for your competitors to do it first, or take advantage of all the people already using mobile devices.

When it comes to presenting a website to a person with one of these mobile devices, there are basically two ways of doing so.

The first way is to modify a “normal” website (one that’s made for viewing on a computer), and through a few tweaks, make it “mobile-friendly”. This is the method I normally suggest, for a few different reasons; the biggest one being that it’s easier and less time-consuming (thus less expensive). It’s not always the case, but in this situation, modifying something that’s already there is much easier than building another site specifically for mobile devices from scratch. With this method, the site will look very similar on a mobile device to the way it does on a computer screen, but certain elements will be sized differently (so they can be seen more easily on the smaller screen), or removed completely (Flash elements, unnecessary elements that will cause slow page loads on a cell-phones slower internet speed, etc).

The other way is to make a completely different website for mobile devices. Normally in this situation, the design does not look the same, as it is completely optimized for smaller screens and slower internet speeds. These sites normally don’t have a lot of images on them, and look more like phone applications than websites. This method obviously takes more time, as a whole other site needs to be built, but it also gives your site a much better chance of being fully usable on a wide range of mobile devices. Larger sites with lots of data are the biggest beneficiaries of such a setup, but I think this is overkill for most smaller websites.

One thing to keep in mind is that unless a website development company specifically says that they’re going to do one of these two methods, it’s normally not included with the website development for a new site. Here at Loggerhead, we try to build sites that have the widest range of compatibility with browsers, which means the sites are accessible and usable on mobile devices. But, just like any other kind of addition to a website, mobile changes are often something that needs to be specifically asked for.

It’s up to you, the website owner, where you would like to take your website into the “mobile age”. I do know one thing for certain, though, and that is that we’re going to be in this “age” well into the future.