Mobile Web

With the number of users accessing websites through mobile devices increasing by the day, it makes sound business sense to offer these users a good user experience when visiting your site. The desktop version of your website will most likely not render correctly on a mobile device. Mobile devices have a smaller screen size, 240 * 320 being the size of today's average mobile, though the trend is toward bigger screen sizes. The capability of mobile browsers vary and a typical mobile browser may not render Flash or execute client-side scripts. The result being a compromised user experience for the mobile user.

Mobile visitors are often potential customers as they tend to be looking for specific information rather than engaging in random browsing. Often they are looking for location specific information. So how do you make sure you do not alienate your mobile visitors? Rather than displaying the desktop version of your site, the right strategy is to create a lightweight version that will display correctly in majority of mobile devices. Mobile sites can be hosted in a sub-domain like m.yoursite.com or in a separate .mobi top-level domain. We recommend going for a sub-domain instead of .mobi, as it allows users to bookmark your website on a desktop and later access it from a mobile.

So what makes a good and user-friendly mobile site?

  • Keep it simple.
  • Avoid or minimize usage of images.
  • Provide enough whitespace to reduce clutter.
  • Keep important information "above the fold".
  • Move menu / links to the bottom.
  • Avoid Flash, JavaScript.
  • Keep page sizes small - users may have to pay more for mobile bandwidth. This also has the added advantage of faster loading over a slower mobile connection.
  • Prioritize content - display only content that's relevant to the mobile user.
  • Users visit your mobile site not to browse, but to find specific information. They may want to get information on a specific product, rather than browse your entire catalog. The information architecture for the mobile site must take this into account.
  • Find a balance between the number of clicks the user has to perform to get to a specific page and the number of links on a single page.

At QBurst, we take all the above aspects into consideration so that the site or application is both usable and useful for those on the move. And we try our best to deliver sites that work across the maximum number of devices and browsers.