Why You Need a Customized Mobile Website
You hear a lot these days about how the future is mobile. Let’s face it, the present is mobile too. For businesses and brands, having a mobile web presence is no longer an option. It is a must, and if you want to make the most of it you need to optimize your website for mobile use.
Why is it so important to have a customized mobile website? Because the rules of the mobile game are different than those of PC’s. A website that was created for the full screen was designed for a completely different user experience. Let’s be more specific.
Ground Rules of Mobile User Experience
Efficiency: Phone screens are so much smaller than regular computer screens. You have to think carefully how to squeeze in information in a more efficient way than you do on a regular website. You need to reconsider the text style, the spreading of images and the use of links. Put yourself in the visitor’s shoes, ask yourself: “What is the main reason I’m visiting this website?”, and make sure your mobile website is build in a way that responds to this need quickly and easily.
Connectivity: There are different ways to encourage your site visitors to contact you. While contact forms are a rather popular method, they work less well on mobile devices with a touch screen. However, mobile sites offer the opportunity to immediately call or text the website owner. Consider the different ways your audience can get in touch with you and list them in the order that best suits their needs, as well as the nature of your business.
Simplicity: A beautiful background image that might look amazing on a full screen can be a disaster on a mobile website. You need to use design elements that simplify things for your users, not overwhelm them. Simplicity also means reducing loading times by using lighter files and less multimedia. Your mobile users would be grateful for that when dealing with slow connection speeds.
Creativity: If you keep an open mind, you will see how your mobile site can recreate the same effect as your full site, without using as much space and time. For example, adding a touch of yellow to the site’s header will convey vitality and spare you the need to use descriptive texts that send the same message. This is exactly the reason it is important to have a customized mobile site. The process of making a mobile website raises these kind of options, leading you towards optimizing your mobile to the fullest.
Flexibility: The way people consume content on mobile devices is rapidly changing. A mobile website owner should be able to keep up with these changes and quickly adapt to them. The full website, however, remains indifferent to these developments and will eventually be less and less relevant for mobile use.
Make the Best Out of Mobile
These key issues show that we can no longer think of full websites and mobile websites in the same terms. Put that together with recent studies that show the speedy expansion of the Smartphone market, and the incredibly fast pace in which new mobile trends are developing, and you’ll understand why it is important to give mobile a serious thought. Even if your HTML5 website absolutely rocks, let it rock on a PC and give millions of mobile users a chance to enjoy your site.
