Does your website need to go mobile?
You have had a company website for years, the web development company you worked with put all their efforts at the time to make your website work in IE7 or even IE6. They spent long hours finding the best solutions to have your website looking amazing on all modern (or not so modern) browsers. And most importantly, your website brought you more business.
A few years down the line (now), where does your website stand? Is it still ahead of its game and bringing you business, or are you missing out on an always increasing mean of internet consumption: mobile browsing?
The short answer is: if your website is not mobile-ready, you’re missing out on business opportunities…
And the long answer is explained below:
1. Facts and figures
A research conducted for Google by Ipsos shows that 45% of the UK population had a smartphone on the period Sep-Oct 2011. It’s a massive rise of 50% compared to the period Jan-Feb 2011. Yes, an impressive 50% increase in 7-8 months. As astonishing is the fact that 93% of smartphone users access the web through their mobile phones on a daily basis. Note that the study was made in 2011 and it didn’t include tablet usage… the numbers should therefore be even higher nowadays. So having a website that works on mobile devices is important.
2. Different approaches
There are a few different approaches to make your website work on mobile devices. Google supports 3 different systems:
- Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs. This is Google’s recommended configuration.
- Sites that dynamically serve all devices on the same set of URLs, but each URL serves different HTML (and CSS) depending on whether the user agent is a desktop or a mobile device.
- Sites that have a separate mobile and desktop sites.
3. Responsive web design
Responsive Web Design is a technique to build web pages that alter how they look depending on the device used to view them. That is, there is one HTML code for the page regardless of the device accessing it, but its presentation changes for the browser displaying the page. Using responsive web design has multiple advantages, including the use of a single URL allowing easy maintenance for administrators using content management systems and helping Google discover your pages more efficiently.
4. Your business website
If your current website uses Flash technology, it’s very unlikely to display at all on most mobile devices (and very hard for Google to find). So a first bit of advice would be to get rid of your Flash based website and have it redesigned fully in HTML5, CSS3… Speak to your web design company to see how they can help you alter or redesign your website with the latest technologies.
Conclusion:
Mobile browsing is getting bigger everyday with smartphone and tablet users reaching websites from these devices on a daily basis. It’s important for your website and business to be at the forefront of the action when users reach their mobile devices. Your business doesn’t need an app to be accessible; the recommended approach by Google is Responsive Web Design. It allows websites to display correctly on a wide range of devices from your smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers and even Internet connected TVs… And that is what we specialise in…
If you are interested in getting a mobile website, please contact us on 0191 4820444.
