A recent report I read suggested on average 14% of browser views in Australia are done on mobile devices. Whilst your usual website maybe viewable on an iPhone, or any other smartphone, it may not be conducive to being used effectively on such devices.
Designing mobile versions of your website requires a new and different approach. Not only are the screen is smaller but the information being sought on how people navigate is quite different. In need to pay close attention to the way people use these devices as different to browsing on a PC.
How you design the page layouts and the content for a site that is being viewed on an iPhone will be vastly different to a PC browser and then browsing on an iPad is different again. A recent shift in website content has seen a move away from the use of flash content. As impressive as it may appear, it just doesn't work on an iPad or iPhone so the experience your visitor has will be vastly different to what they would have seen on their PC. Luckily good web designers are able to code your website in such a way as to identify the type of browser being used to view your site and automatically use this information to redirect the browser to particular pages designed specifically for that browser.
So what this means is you actually have different versions of your site, each designed around the browser being used. Now your first reaction is about the cost of duplicating your site into a new design just to cater for a visitor on an iPhone. It is not that bad because the type of browsing such users do is quite different. They are there to obtain specific quick information so your smartphone version website will in fact be a cut down version of your site.
To see an example - visit www.cto.com.au on your PC browser and now using your iPhone, visit the same site simply keying in the domain URL. Notice
The good news is you don't have to build a whole new website. You just have to do have some code in your pages that will automatically directing iPhone user to a version of your website designed for the iPhone. All this is within your usual site structure.
For our Business Catalyst users this is even better as BC now facilitates mobile version handling as part of our development at full. This proves to be a far more cost-effective solution than going out and having a special version of your site created specifically for smartphone devices. We also can integrate your PC site with your Facebook page for your business.
| 