Mobile Friendly Websites

Over the past few years, mobile web usage has considerably increased to the point were companies need to look at whether developing a mobile friendly website meets their business needs.

The key differences bewteen a web site design for a laptop or desktop computer ompared to a mobile device is screen size and bandwidth.

A desktop computer is usually conected to the internet through broadband whereas a mobile device like a smartphone, iPhone or blackberry are typically used on the move and connected to the internet through a 3G internet connection which is considerably slower than a broadband connecti0n and a computer monitor is considerably larger than the screen on your smartphone.

So the challenge is to make a scaled down version of your main website that is still as engaging as your main site but downloads faster and presents itself in an easy to navgate way on a smaller screen. The other thing we need to do is to detect automatically when someone is viewing your site on a mobile device so they get the mobile site as default.

For example

Harrogate Vouchers. Using the same address on both a desktop computer and a smartphone you will see that the smartphone displays the mobile friendly site.
Go to www.harrogatevouchers.co.uk

Mobile Apps or Mobile Friendly Website?

Mobile search company Taptu has released a detailed report showing that the future of the Mobile Web is likely to be dominated by cross-platform browser-based mobile web sites – rather than apps built specifically for iPhone, Android, or any other platform. Taptu calls the former “the Mobile Touch Web,” which it defines as “Web sites created for mobile touchscreen devices, with finger-friendly layouts and lightweight pages that are fast to load over cellular networks.”

Advantages of a mobile friendly site:

  • Will work across different platforms such as smartphones, iPhone, Blackberry, iPad, Android.
  • A mobile site is generally less costly to develop than an App
  • No need to create an App specific to each platform
  • No need to submit to Apple for approval to be listed in the AppStore

Disadvantages of a mobile friendly site:

  • Limited functionality, some elements of smatphone technology may no tbe accessible through a mobile website such as the use of flash, camera and ‘shake’.
  • Use of a phone’s GPS is possible but does have some limitations.

If you want to explore the possibility of having a mobile friendly version of your web site email us through our contact form.

 

 

 

Social Media

“Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue. ” Source Wikipedia

CMS websites

Having a CMS enabled website enables a site editor with no web design or HTML knowledge to add, edit and remove text, image content and pages. With a few simple clicks you can create a new page on your site.

Brochure websites

Brochure sites are a fantastic way to showcase your business on the web. If you have the sort of business that will not constantly be changing then a well-designed brochure website could be suitable for you.