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Cast your Net wider, get mobile device-optimised!

Over the last few years, the mobile internet has become more prominent with the introduction of more affordable smart devices, as many mid-range mobile phones now come with Wi-Fi built in, as well as being able to surf via the airwaves with 3G. The introduction of the iPhone has certainly accelerated the race to achieve the best internet browsing experience for all mobile device producers and this boom doesn’t look like stopping anytime soon, with the announcement of the next generation of iPhone on the horizon.

In December of 2009, the International Data Corporation (IDC), a market leader in technology market intelligence confirmed to us all that accessing the internet via mobile devices is vastly growing in popularity as the gadgets available to surf the net with are becoming more and more accessible.

The IDC recorded that worldwide there were more than 450 million mobile internet users in 2009. According to comScore Inc., another leader in measuring internet statistics, a third of those users visited the internet via their mobile devices almost every day. By the notable trends discovered from the IDC’s set of data, it is expected that within the next 4 years, that figure will more than double as prices start come down for Joe Public and the ever growing popularity of having mobile phones on ‘contracts’ where an allowance is bundled in as standard with the contract package, so if it’s free/you’re paying for it anyway, why not use it?

“So, you want a mobile device-optimised website? It’s going to cost you!” – It doesn’t have to be this way, and ignoring the mobile revolution could be more costly to your company regardless!

By default, we ensure that our mark up and CSS live up to the W3 standards to allow the majority of mobile device browsers to display them properly, but there isn’t really anything else that we can do on our part to make the site more mobile device-friendly per say, that’s down to the design. Opera Mini is helping to enable desktop-sized websites to be usable on mobile devices by providing zoom features not available from many default mobile browsers, but you still can’t beat having a properly optimised site to ooze out thoughtfulness and quality about a brand – so what’s stopping you? If you wish the pages to look good on a mobile site whilst being as image-heavy as you like on a computer screen where the internet download speed is far superior and there is more real estate, then your best option is to have an alternate, stripped-down bare bones version of your site for mobile devices.

If your website is content managed by BigDotMedia’s CMS and your client doesn’t wish to pay for an extra design/template build, then it might be better to go down the targeted route of optimising for the iPhone/iPod Touch which would be much cheaper, after all, some claim that the iPhone has 50% of the market share of mobile internet browsing today! If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, why not browse to this very website and see whether you fancy something similar for your website! We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

If you’d like to know more, don’t hesitate to contact us, we’re always happy to help!

Sources – Beta News, The IDC, Digital-Lifestyles, comScore