Is your mobile website just a tiny version of your PC browser-based website?

Though that may seem the easiest, cheapest way to provide access to your web site content, it's not very inspiring for your visitors. Web browsers on iPhones, Android mobile devices and other smartphones can be very small or somewhat difficult to read. Users visiting your mobile website are likely on-the-go, and are looking for specific information, so it's important to provide a simple, yet effective solution.

Designing a website for for mobile phones is different from normal web development because mobile browsers are typically not as powerful (or full-featured) as a desktop browser. However, with 3G and 4G data speeds, you can even incorporate video and other rich media into your mobile site.

To make your mobile website usable and effective, we:

• Code mobile websites in XHTML to ensure compliance
• Provide access to web analytics to determine what content mobile web users are accessing
• Only link to essential content in navigation
• Design for a variety of screen sizes: 128 x 160 pixels, 176 x 220 pixels, 240 x 320 pixels, and 320 x 480 pixels. The iPad screen is 1024×768 pixels.
• Avoid the use of Adobe Flash or Javascript to prevent incompatibilites
• Optimize images and use them sparingly
• Make clickable links large
• Put "Back to the Top" links at the bottom of long pages

As you can see, there's plenty that B2 Computing can do to make your mobile website as powerful a tool as your desktop site.