Designing for Mobiles

[techtimmy]

I have several large sites that don't really work as well when browsing them on mobiles. The average mobile phone user has different requirements for browsing a site on their phone; design can almost go out the window, navigation needs to be streamlined, flash can be ignored and dangerously for us adsense doesn't work!

I don't like browsing normal sites on a phone, all that zooming in and out, meh! It seems the most effective and efficient mobile sites are mostly just hyper links or menus getting you straight to the info you are after.

I've been doing research as i write this message. Some people are trumpeting the rise of mobile browsing as likely to take over PC browsing in the next 5 years! If true, we as domainers (especially those with affiliate style sites, (non reliant on adsense)) can't continue to ignore this growing market.



Has anyone else adapted any of their sites to display differently on smart phones? If yes, how's it going. It seems either WML or XHTML-WP (my pref) are the languages, and people are designing for mobile only sites as sub domains of their main sites. Anyone know any good free templates to get me going.

 

[techtimmy]

I was talking with someone earlier who works for a massive global shopping network. He was saying he's seen stats confirming that 6% of website users are browsing their sites via phones. Unfortunately he didnt have stats on how many of those actually complete a sale. Would be interesting to know.

It's certain this figure is going to rise over the next few years as more people get phones and purchasing via your phone becomes an acceptable norm. It's like a marketing companies dream come true. The ultimate impulse buy. See an advert, purchase it straight away, quite scary really.



PS. I purchased a couple of domains names relating mobile websites based on my research. Damn it, I can't stop buying domains

 

[theonemanyuri]

I hate mobile browsing, it's such a step back from browsing on a PC. I think in 5 years, with some sort of advancement in phone browsing, it could be very popular as people take the ability to browse anywhere as a granted, much like nearly everyone in the world does today with communicating on mobile phones.

I don't think that it's going to overtake PC browsing in general, I suspect it will be more likely used for certain niche types of browsing.. checking out geotags, social networking, ordering from shops ready to pick up in person.. pretty much what we're starting to see already. I've also noticed mobile dating is big at the moment. I'm not sure I can see a lot of potential in terms of affiliating though, affiliate dating excluded?

 

[Edwin]

A company I worked with in Tokyo put up mobile-ready versions of every site they were running (over 100,000 pages in total across 100 sites) and get more traffic from the mobile versions than the "regular" versions.

 

[theonemanyuri]

That is pretty amazing, I wouldn't of thought it. That being said, people in Tokyo live to work and don't spend as much time at home as we do, not sure it would translate across. You can also buy girls pants in vending machines over there..

 

[Edwin]

That is pretty amazing, I wouldn't of thought it. That being said, people in Tokyo live to work and don't spend as much time at home as we do, not sure it would translate across. You can also buy girls pants in vending machines over there..

Ah, it's amazing what random little soundbites of popculture filter halfway across the world!

Yes, you probably can buy girls pants in some vending machine somewhere. But in 15 years of living in Tokyo and wandering all over the city, I never saw one. Mind you, I did see vending machines selling rice, curry and noodles in cans, beauty product kits, kids toys, batteries, books, keychains, adult "stuff" ahem, umbrellas, flowers, telephone cards, disposable cameras, as well as the more usual drinks (soft and alcoholic) and cigarettes. Not all in one machine, of course - they specialise...

On the mobile side of things, people do tend to have long commutes and everyone on the trains, buses and underground seems to be stabbing away at a mobile phone (Japanese is a nice compact language so it fits well on a small screen) so it's hardly surprising that mobile sites get a lot of traction.

 

[techtimmy]

Smart phones and decent mobile sites are still pretty new tech so it's hard to see what the future will hold. I can only see it becoming more popular though.

World a different place now to when we grew up.

People have been using Nintendo DS' and Gameboys to keep kids quiet for years. Replace all those devices with an internet enabled device and you've got kids on the net permanently from an early age. That habit will continue into adulthood too.

Everyone online all the time!!!!

 

[theonemanyuri]

Haha amazing. I would love to visit Japan, never been. What did you do for work while you were over there Edwin? That's a good point about their language... screens need to get larger (think iPad, Amazon Kindle, etc.) I think before mobile browsing could offer the same usability on English language sites, as TechTimmy said earlier zooming in and out all the time is a pain in the ass.

Mobile browsing will get big it's fairly inevitable, but like I said until some sort of vast improvement is made I think it will be a different type of browsing all together from what you do at home on your PC, mainly Geotags with direct links to restaurants websites and the like, instant product information and price comparisons... I don't see much scope for affiliate opportunities but what do I know!

Realistically I think the next decade or 2 will see such huge advancement in the web and the way we interact with it, websites as we know them may be a thing of the past. I think the web will become something more involving, even the most innate objects will have a web presence