How Important is it to Make a Webpage Mobile-Friendly?
In days gone by, you could guarantee that when a visitor came to your website, they would do it through a desktop or laptop computer. While this presented you with its own set of issues to deal with, it is nothing when compared to the variety of web-browsing devices available today. With the rise and rise of smartphones and tablets it is no longer enough for your website to perform well in a desktop environment.
A study published by Morgan Stanley in 2010 forecasted mobile web access to have overtaken desktop browsing by 2015. When you stop to consider the wealth of handheld devices out there in the marketplace today, such as the iPad, Kindle and other tablets, smartphones, games consoles and even GPS systems, these kind of projections make perfect sense, and should be giving you a heads-up about the way in which your web pages will have to adapt to future technology.
By tailoring your website to work fluidly on a handheld device - either by using a responsive design that adapts to the medium through which it is accessed, or by developing a single site that accounts for the limitations imposed by mobile devices such as screen size and internet connection speed - you are opening up your range of services to a much wider audience and potentially coming to someone's rescue while your competitors continue to hold on to their unresponsive, outdated sites.
Say, for example, someone needs an item on the go in a hurry. They've tried their regular high-street outlets and drawn a blank, so they pull out their smartphone and head to the internet. Are they more likely to hang around on a website that looks tiny on their mobile screen, with buttons that are difficult to press accurately and illegible text, or would they prefer to come to a site which adapts to their phone and makes their visit pleasurable as well as helpful?
Of course, there will always be instances when mobile compatibility is not so necessary - such as photo gallery websites which benefit from being displayed on a larger screen. In these circumstances, time and money could be saved by continuing to develop your site with the desktop browsers in mind. But for the majority of those whose sites are promoting goods or services, having an adaptable, responsive webpage which displays clearly on a range of handheld devices, it could mean the difference between gaining or losing customers.
A study published by Morgan Stanley in 2010 forecasted mobile web access to have overtaken desktop browsing by 2015. When you stop to consider the wealth of handheld devices out there in the marketplace today, such as the iPad, Kindle and other tablets, smartphones, games consoles and even GPS systems, these kind of projections make perfect sense, and should be giving you a heads-up about the way in which your web pages will have to adapt to future technology.
By tailoring your website to work fluidly on a handheld device - either by using a responsive design that adapts to the medium through which it is accessed, or by developing a single site that accounts for the limitations imposed by mobile devices such as screen size and internet connection speed - you are opening up your range of services to a much wider audience and potentially coming to someone's rescue while your competitors continue to hold on to their unresponsive, outdated sites.
Say, for example, someone needs an item on the go in a hurry. They've tried their regular high-street outlets and drawn a blank, so they pull out their smartphone and head to the internet. Are they more likely to hang around on a website that looks tiny on their mobile screen, with buttons that are difficult to press accurately and illegible text, or would they prefer to come to a site which adapts to their phone and makes their visit pleasurable as well as helpful?
Of course, there will always be instances when mobile compatibility is not so necessary - such as photo gallery websites which benefit from being displayed on a larger screen. In these circumstances, time and money could be saved by continuing to develop your site with the desktop browsers in mind. But for the majority of those whose sites are promoting goods or services, having an adaptable, responsive webpage which displays clearly on a range of handheld devices, it could mean the difference between gaining or losing customers.
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