Should Businesses Have Mobile Friendly Websites?

cellPhoneSafe: "A client of ours has asked us to develop a mobile friendly version of their website. Their CEO has a Pocket PC and his browsing experience of his site is not great. However, aside from keeping him happy, is there a business case for a mobile friendly version of his site? Is there actually any volume of web surfers using a Pocket PC, Palm, or other web-capable pocket devices? It's one thing to convince a client of the benefit of supporting Mozilla (else they'll loose 10% of potential customers), but how do the figures stack up for mobile users? To be honest, I'd be surprised if mobile users accounted for more than 1 in a 1000 visitors to a site, so I'd be interested in your experiences. Have you developed a website for mobile users? Were you overwhelmed with new customers? Did these mobile users expect a different service offering to traditional PC users?"

Comments

mobile internet, not much fun, even if improved

[yagu]

I can only speak from my personal experiences with mobile internet, and they've been mostly disappointing, but I think the shortcoming is more in the form factor and less in the reluctance or resistance of the internet developers to provide mobile compatible web sites.

I first surfed "mobile" with a cell phone, "duette" (can't remember the manufacturer, doesn't matter). It had a small something-like six or seven line black and white character based screen. The access to the internet was provided by the phone service, and apparently they pretty much mapped the web sited you would access, there was no notion of "address bar" (that I remember). The speed was slow, the sites were rarely updated, and the presentation was terrible.

Fast forward to a month ago when I got the latest Palm with hi-res screen and wi-fi built in. I mostly got it for the high quality screen (which has not disappointed) but looked forward to also having near hi-res internet experience. This device has essentially half-VGA resolution and hence gives "normal" surfing access to the internet.

I've not encountered too many sites that bother to accommodate mobile devices, and after using the Palm TX for a while I see why. The Palm is probably one of the better devices for screen quality and even then (even when a site "does mobile"), the experience is unsatisfactory. (Google actually does a mobile presentation, but I actually would prefer it didn't -- the real estate and presentation is SO clamped down, I'd prefer panning the screen.)

In my opinion, I don't think there is much to be done about creating a satisfactory, let alone a "great" experience for mobile devices. Their form factor is just too small -- there are far too many people who, even with high resolution, cannot use these to surf the net comfortably.

If I were making decisions about a web site and whether to accommodate mobile devices my first instinct would be to ignore that niche. I wonder if there are any compelling counters to this experience?

Re:mobile internet, not much fun, even if improved

[MikeFM]

The biggest problems are that A) websites don't have the proper design and styles for handhelds and B) that mobile devices don't properly support handheld styles. It's difficult to make a decent mobile website because phones and PDAs just don't have decent browsers that actually obey the rules. A major pain in the ass.

I do think at least a basic mobile site is important though. Basic information such as contact info, hours, product descriptions, etc should be available for mobiles.

Chicken and egg?

[blackraven14250]

More mobile users would visit if it were actually somewhat easy to visit. But companies won't make an attempt at a mobile site until there's enough volume. This is why technology gets adapted so damn slowly.

Not in my experience

[timmyf2371]

I would guess it's different for most people and how they use mobile browsing (if at all). Here's my take on it.

I use a mobile device quite frequently to access the internet when travelling and aside from the applications such as IRC and other such utilities, I don't usually use the web browsing facility for anything *too* serious; I'll catch up on the latest news, look up the phone number for the nearest Pizza Hut and activities like that.

If there's a website I want to purchase something from, or even find information out about a particular business, I'll stick the URL in my to-do list and check it out when I'm at a PC or laptop, allowing me to look into it in more depth.

Umm... another "It Depends" answer

[Zadaz]

In general, no, but who goes to your site? If it's young Japanese girls, then you better have one that will work on their phones. Are you processing orders from a sales force on their PDA's? Would be nice to get those orders in... I mean one look at your server logs should tell you how many people trying to use a mobile browser...

Re:Umm... another "It Depends" answer

[JanneM]

I mean one look at your server logs should tell you how many people trying to use a mobile browser...

That will of course tend to undercount it quite a bit. How many people will even try, knowing from experience that commercial sites almost never work unless they specifically say so on their homepage?

It reminds me of my (former) bank that stated they will never allow Mozilla since none of their customers use it - which they of course did not since they couldn't.

Would mobile users pay for such websites?

[imoou]

It's commonly agreed that a mobile friendly website takes additional resources to create.

Given the fact that most websites have problem asking money from traditional site visitors, I find it hard to believe any additional spending can be justified by most websites.

Having said that, some niche websites, which either [1] are built primarily for mobile users (that is, mobile friendly website is in the initial budget) or [2] offer valuable content which mobile users are willing to pay for.

Really depends on the companies needs...

[licamell]

You really can't expect a decent answer to your question without presenting the needs of the company better. Is this company's website just an information website about the company, or do they actually provide some sort of web-based business? And if the latter is the case, is it something that mobile users would even be interested in? These are the kinds of things you have to decide, not just if websites for mobile devices are good in general. (This is slashdot, so of course you'll get the hypothetical/philophical answers to this general debate - but it doesn't seem to be what you want).

Depends on the nature of your business

[aztektum]

I work @ Sprint and a lot of our customers that look at our PDA devices have been asking the sales people "Will it work with my bank site?" There is a demand, I think, for certain businesses to offer mobile access to accounts to pay bills and all that. However does say Intel really have a reason for a "mobile" site? Would General Motors need one? But if you're a service provider (cable, utility), financial institution, or a Google or Yahoo, then catering to a mobile audience at least partially, could be a bonus.

pretty simple...

[Run4yourlives]

For most, simple CSS linked properly is good enough...

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="handheld" href="/style/standard.css" />

Be sure to hide all the big images as well.

If you have a big audience on cells or pda's, you may want to optimize it a little more, doing things like putting a menu right at the top of the page, lot's of "back to tops", etc.

Once again, you won't be doing any of this without standards.

*sigh*

[TrumpetPower!]

Anytime anybody asks these kinds of questions, it's just a vivid demonstration of how clueless said person is when it comes to just what this Intarweb thing is.

Rather than beat you over the head with your misunderstandings, let me just skip to the chase.

Design your sites in this order, and you'll never be concerned with these kinds of questions again.

1. Design your site in valid XHTML / HTML 4.0 / whatever that looks good in lynx.
2. Knock yourself out with CSS to make it look fantastic in your personal favorite choice of Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, Konqueror, etc.
3. Add just enough <!--[if IE]>blah<[endif]--> statements to make it look good in all versions of IE that're still supported by Microsoft.
4. If somebody points out handheld devices, screen readers, etc., that understand CSS but do a poor job of rendering the CSS you used on your site, create a custom stylesheet just for them.

That's it. That's all there is to it. When you're done, you've got a Web site that looks great on all platforms and validates to all meaningful standards. And, if it weren't for Microsoft, you could reasonably forget the last two steps.

Cheers,

b&

Re:*sigh*

[Eustace Tilley]

I think you are a behind-the-times anonymous coward.

Opera Mini claims to support the vast majority of WAP-capable phones.

Re:*sigh*

[sych]

But this is exactly the direction WML/WAP has gone in - the old WML is gone, and they've moved to XHTML.

CSS and "accept" headers will decide how the page is rendered, but you basically don't need to write seperate pages anymore - just follow the standards, and the useragent will render it appropriately.

It's a lot like accessibility.

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

How about making the site accessible for screen readers to assist the disabled. If you look into it, you will find that It has a lot in common with mobile users... Nobody can remember 15 menu items when they hear them, and then navigate back to them. Nobody can understand pages when they are described if they are too complicated.

You need to radically simplify presentation to make them comfortably usable by the bandwidth impaired, be it visual bandwidth in terms of vision, or using magnifiers, or using a PDA, or in terms of having the keep the structure in you head while listening to the page being
described.

If the company is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and employees are expected to access the site, then they are pretty much compelled to make it accessible. You can
get PDA support for free riding on that.

Use CSS

[StonedRat]

If your site is written properly, i.e. using CSS for layout, then at the very least you can simply disable CSS for mobile visitors, not very pretty but doesn't block any content. The best option would be to have a style sheet with it's media set to handheld to tailor the content they see. Hide unnecessary stuff, and format the rest in a compact fashion:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="handheld" href="handheld.css" />

Opera is useful for testing these styles (Shift+F11) and the Web developers toolbar adds this feature to firefox. A very well made site compatible with handhelds is none other than opera.com, everything on their site has a well optimised handheld version.

Best practices and theory

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The theory is, these devices are quite common, and more people would use them if more sites supported them. I like Google Mobile, I use a handful of other sites that are compatible, including Snapstream.net for Beyond TV (now that's a slick mobile site- it autodetects Windows CE and Pilot, and shrinks back to a subset that works wonderfully for finding a show you just heard about and scheduling it for recording to your home PC, which allows you to download it back to your device for later watching- completely cool closed loop).

Now for best practices- go light on the graphics, better if you MUST have pictures should be a link to the picture, not an IMG tag. Text only. Few people have the newer Windows Mobile 5.0 devices with the hi-res screen- think 240 pixels wide. These devices are great for vertical scrolling, bad for side scrolling. Keep entry to links or single field with a submit button- javascript may not work well, and typing is a real pain on these devices. Same idea with pictures- think 240x240 or 240x320 at most.

Yes

[sulli]

Yes, they should
make their web
pages small enough
for cellphone
users to read.

Is your site interactive?

[Etcetera]

The only things I've found myself doing on my mobile device (a small, underpowered, but nifty, Samsung i500-ph through Sprint) consist of:

* Reference lookups (ie, directions)
* News updates (Drudge is surprisingly accessible, and many blogs work too); I tend to do this after receiving a "Breaking News" SMS message from one of my local TV stations (nbc739.com)
* Sites that use interactivity

To expound on the later, I run a couple of different "portal" type sites that allow me to log in, view profiles, and get information on other people. With that sort of customization available, we're creating mobile-friendly calendars, phone lists, photo galleries, and news updates, all to allow people to access things wirelessly and get "what they need."

If your website is basically a brochure, then no, you probably don't need a mobile-friendly site per-se (although you do need to make it WAI-accessible for the disabled). If your site has something to do on it that someone might want to do when they are away from a terminal, then by all means start developing. As someone else said, it's almost a chicken-and-egg problem. But once people see that they can access your features more conveniently, I'd wager you'll see usage improve.

CSS, money, and reality...

[cloricus]

Look I write my pages in xhtml/css so porting to a small screen/device isn't much trouble at all so it really comes down to if they are going to pay me for it. If they do that's great and I'll do it...Though when you add reality mobile web browsers aren't in common usage because end users find them to hard ... Hell they find MSIE on their desktops to hard. So I can honestly see things like the Nokia 770 being the only type of device that really takes off for mobile browsing and it uses full page code anyway - with some extra Opera tweaks for large scale pages.

I personally like the idea of sites working on as many screens, devices, OSes, browsers as possible so I'd do it just for that warm fuzzy feeling that that 1 in 100000000 customers sees that you've thought of them and you gain +1 respect from them which could come in handy for their next purchase of a product like the one you supply.

Maybe this is the wrong way to think about it

[hey!]

I've often found myself resisting something that the boss wants because it not only fails to justify itself, it creates a long term maintenance burden.

And figured out later that while I was right in my narrow analysis, in the broader analysis I was wrong.

Sometimes solving a more general problem is easier than solving a specific problem. It's always more cost effective than solving an endless sequence of specific problems. If you keep an open mind, you often give the boss what he wants -- and more than he ever asked for. It seems to me that best web development practices would both help a great deal with this problem and with downstream maintenance. The reason we don't do the right thing most of the time is the pressure from management for quick results.

So, in that case what you have here is an opportunity. The boss has something in your purview that he cares about. Depending on how you frame this problem, you either have a pointless exercise in satisfying a CEO whim, or you have a CEO who has stumbled on the importance of separating content and presentation. If you treat it like the former, you're committing to a permenant doubling of effort on everything you do so that it will look nice on the CEO's PDA. If you treat it like the latter, you can make the CEO happy while reducing your downstream maintenance costs.