There are really two ways in which your website can be optimized for mobile now. The first of these is what has now become the most popular and that is to have what is known as a responsive design. A responsive design means that the content on your page changes size and sometimes layout to show it well on different size screens.
The second way of showing a mobile site is to create a specific website just for mobile visitors. This is generally a good idea for some businesses whose mobile visitors will have different needs to their main site visitors…
It is also a good thing to do if you have many thousands of webpages and a responsive design would be too costly to implement.
In such a case a simpler mobile only site is a good idea and then it is worthwhile having a link to the full site if necessary.
No matter what kind of website you have however the chances are extremely high that you need to make sure your website is properly optimized for mobile.
Your analytics will give you a good indication to see how many of your visitors are coming from a mobile and what it is they are looking for. You should also look at how long they are spending on your site as this will give you a good indication of how well your site is optimized.
Let’s finish up by taking a quick look at the pros and cons of responsive design and mobile specific sites.
|
Responsive |
Mobile | ||
| Pros | Cons | Pros |
Cons |
| One Url is needed | Might need complete redesign | Can create a simpler site to give visitors exactly what they want | Need a redirect which can be complicated |
| Easy to maintain | Might be giving visitors too much information | Easier to optimize and should load faster | |
| Cost Effective | Can be slower | ||
| No need for complicated redirects | Not as well optimised | ||
