You might be reading this on a mobile site. A site created to best suit the needs of a mobile user. You’re not alone if you’re browsing on the go. Out of all the web traffic in the world, 49.73% is accessed from a mobile device. If you have a website for your business it pays to understand a little bit about the different types of mobile sites available. There are three distinct designs for mobile websites: mobile friendly, mobile optimized, and responsive design.
Mobile Friendly Web Design
Let’s start with mobile friendly design. All websites should have at least a mobile friendly design. It can help your customers and clients reach you. It allows text based email addresses and phone numbers to click through to the correct app. Although Adobe Flash is not always supported on mobile operating systems, namely iOS, it is still possible for a mobile friendly site to rotate pictures and play certain slideshows.
Having a mobile friendly site also makes it easier for your device to use less data while browsing the web. This is due to keeping things like image sizes much smaller. Therefore, you don’t need to use more megabits to load images.
Mobile Optimized Web Design
Mobile optimized designs are easier for people to use on their mobile devices. They feature large buttons and reformatted pages. If the site is easier to navigate for people browsing on a mobile browser it improves communication between the site owner and the audience. It’s best to have your content available for as many people as possible. Optimizing your page allows mobile users to navigate the site with ease. In return, this may increase the number of clicks you get on each page.
A big part of optimizing a website for mobile use is making sure that the customer browsing on a mobile device will type far less frequently than a desktop browser will. It is common practice to reduce the graphics, making them simpler and optimized for a smaller screen. Besides saving data, changing your graphics is one way to make the site easier to navigate. Additionally, people who are searching on the go usually are looking for key information quickly. This helps cut down on the time between the question and the answer.
Responsive Design
Responsive design is a more recent invention that combines the two. When responsive design first came out in the early years of this decade, it was an exciting development for web developers and designers. Responsive design does what its name suggests, responds to the customer’s screen size. It automatically recreates formatting to best suit the screen size. So it looks different on an PC vs a mobile phone or tablet. It looks different for many screen sizes, making sure that it’s optimized to work best for each different size screen.
Responsive design is more expensive to develop, but many say it is worth it in the long run. Giving your site’s users the most seamless experience possible is always the goal with web design. Find out where your traffic is coming from, either mobile or desktop devices. Looking at this number may just persuade you to spring for the extra cost of creating a responsive design for your website.
If you need assistance in figuring out the right mobile strategy for you, or want to implement a mobile website design, give Site Ascension a call today! We are here to help.
