As our recent study with Investis showed, only 20% of the UK’s largest companies currently have mobile websites, primarily due to the complexities, challenges and costs of designing an effective user experience for this medium. A particular challenge is the fact that best practice standards for traditional (desktop) websites are not all directly applicable to mobile.
My recent article on CMSWire covered the ways in which content and design creators can ensure a great mobile web experience by applying standards. Such standards can greatly assist in addressing the factors you need to take into consideration when designing a site for mobile such as:
- The reduced screen size of mobile devices
- Less memory, less bandwidth, slower speed of service
- Inability to display multiple windows on the same screen
- Limitations imposed by battery life
- Variable support for cookies, embedded objects or scripts
Fortunately, organisations don’t have to work out how to deal with these differences on their own. Standards do exist for mobile web – ActiveStandards uses them as a basis for monitoring mobile sites, and by using them as the foundation of your site you can ensure the best possible user experience.
