Today, smartphones are not a luxury item – they are something that is so common that even a lot of schoolchildren own them. They are also rapidly becoming the preferred way of using the web for a lot of adults.
This means that every business owner should make an effort to cater to mobile users. In fact, comScore reports that we have reached the point where there are more mobile web users than there are desktop users, and as Smart Insights explains in their report, this means that having a good strategy for reaching and retaining mobile users is essential. The good news is that you don’t need to have different websites for desktop and mobile users if you take advantage of responsive designs.
One Site, Many Platforms
Neilsen offers some useful guidelines for “transmedia” websites. These guidelines cover the points that every website should hit – things like catering to slow download speeds, old software, weak hardware, touch interfaces and unusual screen resolutions. Responsive design covers most of these issues quite well, so if you use a good CMS and choose a theme that covers mobile and desktop devices then you are already ahead of the crowd.
Companies such as https://www.bugfinders.com offer software testing services that have those crucial cross-platform optimisations in mind. They understand that the days of there being a difference between a mobile and a desktop website are long gone. With the exception of perhaps serving up lower quality, smaller images for low resolution screens, websites should be fluid and have layouts that look good on any device.
If you are looking for a software testing company, make sure that they understand how to provide a good end-user experience for both desktop and mobile users, and make sure that they test their websites on as many different platforms as possible. Do not make assumptions about how your website will look – remember that while many smartphones have sophisticated browsers, when you get to the lower-end feature phones, things become far more unpredictable in terms of functionality and power.
Looking to The Future
The trend towards “Phablets” may change the design constraints that web designers face when it comes to accommodating mobile users, but right now there are a huge number of different screen sizes, and browser capabilities, for designers to consider. If you want your site to succeed, then you cannot afford to ignore any of your user-base.
Today, a “normal website” should be a flexible, powerful website that looks good whether it is viewed on an iPad with a retina display, a feature phone, a tablet PC or an old desktop using Internet Explorer (after all, you want to cater to people shopping at work!) if you cannot do this, you will lose customers. Given the power and flexibility of modern content management systems, and the fact that Google is pushing webmasters to be more mobile-friendly, it makes sense to invest in improving your site today.