So you building a mobile website for your company or product and need some best practices, tips and advice? Listen up. Here are some of the most important things to consider when building a mobile site.
What URL should I use?
Ideally you want all the different URL variations we see people use for mobile sites. The big problem is there is no defacto standard for a mobile site like there are for websites. With a website, its easy. www dot company name dot com or dot co.za. If that doesn’t work, a quick Google search for said company and you on your way. With mobile, its a little more complex, but you can make it really easy for your mobile users. Firstly decide what your mobile domain is going to be for marketing purposes (If someone asks what your mobile site is, this is the answer you always going to give them). Once decided on, make sure you setup all the other options and redirect them to your final mobile site URL.
So if your mobile site URL is going to be company.mobi (remove the www. it takes time typing it into your phone) redirect all the other options to it. Those other options being:
- www.company.mobi
- m.company.com
- mobile.company.com
- www.company.com/mobile
- www.company.com/m
Lastly, if your have a smart web programmer, get them to check if someone is browsing your site with a mobile phone and redirect them to your mobile site, company.mobi.
Less is more with mobile site design
The less images, pictures and text, the better with a mobile site. If you could only list 1 thing about your company or product on a website, what would that be? Most probably contact information, so get that up front, without any fluff.
Use a large font for navigation and keep the least amount of links in the menu as possible. If the page does scroll, create a smaller footer and repeat the links so users don’t have to scroll back to the top to navigate again.
Kulula just recently launched their mobile site, Kulula.mobi and it’s a really good example of less is more. 5 links, logo that incorporates the mobile URL and a simple footer with 2 links to allow users to switch to the full site or mobile site. With Kulula, the most important info to a traveller is the status of their flight, whats the weather at my destination doing, what rules and info apply to me flying and how do I get hold of Kulula. That’s it. No fluff around specials, car hire deals, how can we improve surveys, how green a company they are etc. That is all info you will find on their full website.
Which phone should we design for?
As many as possible! Start with the most popular phones, which in South Africa are NOT iPhones and Blackberrys. It’s the Nokia XpressMusic and Samsung E250 phones. If your site works 100% on these devices, it will pretty much work on anything! The nice to have effects that iPhone and Android phones can render are great to have, but be clever about developing them so that if you aren’t on a smartphone, you don’t take away from the user experience and what the end goal is of the mobile site.
So in summary, your goal with a mobile site is somewhat different from your fully fledged website. Make it easy to guess the URL, use less images, less text and offer just the bare basics and most important information your user would want on your mobile site!
Read more posts by Jason Bagley
Related posts:
Less is definitely more with mobile site design, but less is not more when it comes to functionality of a mobi site. Why on earth would you offer just the bare basics when you dont have to?
Kulula have followed SAA with their also near to useless mobi site and this sums up brands understanding of mobi (ie. very little) in the fact that they think mobi has to be a poor cousin to web services. There is no reason why Kulula could not have launched with a full mobile version of their website incorporating flight bookings, car hire, booking management and changes, etc including online check-in which is ideally what you would need whilst on the move.
All of this could be achieved easily with a less is more design and a great mobile dev company facilitating it. The Kulula mobi site is not device aware and does not adapt itself automatically to the variety of handsets in the market. It is possible to design perfectly for all 6000+ handsets in the market including automatic upwards enhancement for smart and touch devices.
Sorry Jason, but with advice and deployment examples like this, we are relegating our SA brands to be the very poor cousins of those abroad who are following good advice. The technology and experience exists in this country to have made Kulula.mobi fantastic and there are plenty of good examples of transactional sites out there…. This is certainly not one of them, and what really is the point of this mobile site other than providing unnecessary ‘fluff’. Sorry!
Hey Tim, have you got some examples of really top notch SA mobile sites we can use as reference?
Well, on a transactional level, a good example is Compuctiket.mobi which is only in phase 1 at the moment, with some very exciting things coming including flight and travel booking/management in the next month or so.
Its fully device aware and repurposes itself for all handsets including adding finger space for touch devices when detected. It follows the ‘less is more’ approach (design) but offers full booking functionality of the site. (with the exception of seating plan selection which is coming soon). I guess thats a good one for starters as that works on pretty much all 600o devices in the market.
As an extreme example, Sterkinekor.mobi is now 4 years old (!!!) and does loads more than the Kulula site… the new SK mobi site is due for launch Quarter 2 2012 and offers significant improvements.
Thanks Tim. I do see where you are coming from and I think I got caught up on the whole “less is more” when it comes to mobile without thinking that mobile definitely has the ability to play alongside fully fledged web sites.
Wow Jason! I really liked your post, until I read Tim’s comments
I’ve just come across a major retailer that directs customers to their mobi site – which is in fact NOT a mobi site at all. How dumb it that? Still so much ignorance out there about how people are using the internets.
I know this presentation I did at ‘Mobile Web in Africa’ has been overused to death, but in the context of the above it explains exactly what I mean and what is possible and talks about all considerations and technical aspects when mobilising. If it can be done on the web, it can actually be done on the mobile (a whole lot better in many cases thanks to the likes of geolocation etc).
Big apologies for the shameless plug but it will help put this discussion into perspective…
http://www.slideshare.net/TimBishop/prezence-digital-mobilising-brands-properly
@Tim – great insight from a guy who’s walked the walk.
But in this instance, I actually don’t agree with you. It’s not to say that mobi sites need to be the poor cousin, but it’s rather a case of building for the environment… meaning:
1. small screens
2. cannot multi-task
3. slow loading time (most used mobile connectivity speed is Edge)
I.e. Less IS more relating to design and function.
I’ve used SK’s mobisite and Computicket – and for both, the function is solid but the experience is tiering because of the various levels of nav you have to go through.
Now, the Kulula mobi site I like. it does 5 things, and it does them well with minimal page loads.
(obviously all of this relates to mobisites not apps)
But Louis the Kulula site does not do anything at all? If this is mobi going forward… what is the point? Small screens are taken care of with HCA, Multitasking is not necessary if you want to go and book flights/movie/right and everything can be (is) optimised to be tiny and run easily on edge (including the option to browse without images).
When and for what would you ever use this site when you are ‘mobile’? The best you could do when stuck in traffic on the way to ORT is see how much you are going to miss your flight by and not be able to do anything about it, or check what the weather is doing, but you are ‘mobile’ and can therefore look up! This is a Mobile site for mobile site sake, it offers no value to me the ‘mobile’ user who travels. The context of the potential user here has not been taken into account and I am really not sure why Kulula have done this or how they think this can add value to me?
At least give me the option to have to go through a couple more tiers (unavoidably) and let me do something useful such as book/change/checkin.
SIZE For the record (regarding speed = Edge)
Browsing on a Samsung E250
(Using Yslow to measure size)
Kulula.mobi home = 14.8K
Computicket home with all feature event images ON = 17.9K
Computicket home with all feature images OFF = 8.2K
Comment
Handy insights, like the brevity of the Kulula design, however, I think that customer/user utility and engagement also have an important role to play in design, after all, the site must satisfy a customer/user need and offer some value.
2 really interesting sides of the coin, and I can’t place which one it is that I support. I never have much time to do things on my mobile, which for me is why the simplest easy to use method seems best. But i like the idea of having all of the functionality there if i want it, although in my mind, that is what the full website is for. Then again, I have a computer unlike so many South Africans.
Yes, it’s a fence sitting post, but what i really wanted to say was thanks to Tim for sticking his neck out and creating an interesting discussion, and to Jason for taking it on the chin and entering the discussion with an open mind
@Mark I’m with you on this one.
In the end I think it all comes down to 2 things:
1) Research to identify what your audience needs are.
2) Clarity on what services/prodcuts your company offers.
So, what this means is that you’ll have mobisites with great functionality and others that are simple yet filled with useful content. In my mind, both are right.
Another angle: What if Kulula is developing this mobile website in phased approach starting off with a simple 5 paged mobisite, adding more features at each phase/stage?