Mobile Website Design Principles: Part 2 – Cross-Platform Browsing

With web browsing on mobile devices on the rise, many web developers are creating mobile versions of their sites. Creating a mobile website can be difficult, especially since there are many platforms available on phones. By taking the following information into consideration, creating a mobile website shouldn’t be such a difficult task.

Let’s start with your markup language. A few different types are available for those building a mobile website. WML, or Wireless Markup Language, has been around since the early days of mobile web devices. It is an XML markup language. While it is available on every phone with web capabilities, it has been superseded by XHTML. XHTML is available in the standard XHTML rendered by desktop browsers, and XHTML-MP, the MP standing for Mobile Profile. The only difference between the two is that XHTML-MP has a few less elements and tighter restrictions to make it easier for a mobile device to render the website.

The next thing to keep in mind is the many screen resolutions available in the mobile world. The most common ones are 128 x 160 pixels, 176 x 220 pixels, 240 x 320 pixels and 320 x 480 pixels. By keeping these dimensions in mind, you will be able to optimize some of your content. However, it’s best to keep your site as minimal as possible, especially since there’s no mouse on a mobile phone and they are only able to move up and down a page. While there are a few exceptions in the market, such as the iPhone and the Nokia Internet Tablet, but these phones should be able to browse your regular page easily.

The goal for any web site should be to know your customers in order to deliver to them the best available content. This goal is even more important with mobile sites since you need to target the use of your site. Regular web users are most likely sitting at a desk facing a large monitor that has a high resolution. Visitors who are browsing your mobile site, however, view it through a tiny screen that’s usually less than 1/4 of your desktop’s resolution.

The final step in mobile website design is to test your design. While desktop browsers can be forgiving with code, mobile browsers don’t have the processing power available to automatically fix errors. This can possibly render your website completely useless. Luckily, there are some tools to help in this process. This W3C validator is designed specifically for mobile websites. The next step is to test the site on a mobile platform. While there are emulators available to see your website’s general layout as it would be on a mobile device, these tools won’t be 100% accurate. They can help in the design process, though. The only sure-fire way to test your site is to view it on a mobile phone. Try to test it on phones with different resolutions to ensure that it’s working correctly.

Mobile website design, while similar to standard design, can be difficult if you don’t have the proper tools available. There are many services available that can do it for you, thankfully. Even if you’ve designed your website without the help of others, mobile website design may be difficult.

Mobile Website Design Principles: Part 1 – Assessing Your Audience

With the number of users browsing the web from a mobile device steadily increasing, most mobile websites are still below standards. Many web developers just don’t understand how easy it is to create a good web experience for users of mobile devices. Mobile website design is steadily becoming a must-have skill for many small businesses. The first, and most important step, is to assess your target audience to see what the purpose of your mobile website should be.

There are three groups of visitors that use mobile web applications. Let’s look at them in detail:

Casual surfers act similarly to customers of traditional websites in that they aren’t really interested in one thing. They may just have a few spare minutes in between tasks and decide to take a look around. Since these users may only see your site for a few moments, your goal should be to make your content memorable so that they come back for more. Aim for small chunks that are just enough to keep them visited, but not so long that they can’t browse the entire site in one visit.

Repeat visitors are constantly returning for some sort of specific data. Since the interface of a mobile device is limited, avoid burying the content your customers want behind a few clicks. Try to keep your most viewed content at the top of the site.

The last group of visitors is the urgent ones. Depending on the business of your site, you may have a customer need some information or product as quickly as possible. By identifying the most important needs of these users and making that content available in the shortest amount of time, you’ll increase the usefulness of your site and keep these kinds of visitors around.

While you are building the website mobile version, you need to decide on a domain name. You will also need to work out how to advertise its existence. There are several options for choosing a mobile domain. You can use a separate domain name altogether, such as http://www.yoursite-mobile.com, use a subdomain, such as http://mobile.yoursite.com, or even use the .mobi extension, such as http://yoursite.mobi.

By finding out who your audience will be, you will be able to develop and market a mobile website to best match their needs.