A recent study suggested that over 63 million people in the USA are using mobile devices to access the internet.  And in a study from the other side of the world, around 40% of mobile phone users in the UK used their hand-held devices to go online.  With forecasts putting the number of people around the world accessing the internet using their mobile phones or other mobile devices at around 1.7 billion by the year 2013, the world is literally at our fingertips. 

This growth means many things to many people, but to web designers, it means looking at websites in a totally different way.  Some of the obvious differences between websites designed for larger, conventional screens and those for mobile devices are the screen size (duh..!.) and the functionality of the device (keys are more difficult to navigate etc) whilst other, less obvious differences relate to more technical things such as user interfaces, browsers and different operating systems. 

Just what are the tricks to website design for mobile devices?.

The first thing is to keep things simple.  Mobile users often want location-specific information and they generally want it in a hurry – with little interest in all the fancy bells and whistles.

Screen size is an important consideration, so mobile sites should be simpler than standard sites with fewer graphics and less text .  Big, slow downloads just translate into user frustration (particularly if they’re paying for information they don’t want or need) – and people will move on quickly.  Don’t use pop-ups or open new windows, and rework menus to simplify navigation.  Highly visible icons instead of text should be used as links – and should feature at both the top and bottom of the page.  One way to simplify navigation is to have the menu options on the home page only with each of the other pages just with a link back to the home page at both ends of the page, suggests one of Perth’s best web design companies, GTP i-commerce. 

Knowledge of the target market (ie who uses the site most) is also invaluable as this dictates things such as screen size, operating systems and resolutions.  For example, if the majority of site visitors are business users, web site designers should optimise sites for Blackberry devices (360 x 480 pixel screens) or Windows Mobile .  A different target market who use the iPhone predominantly will need to have sites optimised differently still.

Many mobile users look for location-specific information which means functionality is another important consideration.  But because mobile devices have small keys and aren’t always that easy to operate, web designers need to ensure that users can input information using selections, rather than typing text which can result in inaccuracies.

Communications technology is evolving rapidly and website designers are having to think on their feet to keep up with the continuous development.    And although websites on mobile devices still have the same objectives as ‘conventional’ websites eg search engine optimisation, rankings etc,  the information on them just has to be delivered in a different way.