The mobile web is always evolving and one current trend is the rise of the full web on phone. By the full web, I mean being able to use any and all the web content available on PCs. It's happening, thanks to better browsers and transcoders that can render almost any page on a phone screen. I've still believe that a made for mobile page will give a better user experience than a programmatic conversion of a page designed for an 600X600 px screen into something that fits the 176x220 px window of a mobile. But we need the full web on mobile phones too. Traditionally, mobile web development has been focused on taking a subset of web content deemed most relevant to the mobile user and rendering it in a format that works well on the limited browsers embedded in phones. Done right a mobile specific page looks great on mobile screens and is easy to navigate, but sometimes that's not enough. The key is that the mobile web is a subset of the full web. There are times when we need some content or a service that can't be found on the mobile web.
The rise in mobile full web browsing has at least four drivers.
The full web on phones doesn't mean that mobile specific sites are going away. There will always be a need for small, fast loading sites designed for common mobile tasks like checking the weather, email, news headlines or getting directions. If you doubt that, consider the hundreds of iPhone specific web apps that have appeared since that handset's launch. Even though the iPhone has the biggest screen and one of the best browsers of any phone there's still a demand for content relevant to the mobile context and formatted for its smaller screen.
Most mobile web traffic is still to mobile formated sites. But more and more users are wandering off onto the full web in their search for information and services they can't find on mobile specific sites. What does the increasing use of non-mobile sites on mobile devices mean for us as content providers and developers? As always it's about the user experience, make it easy and intuitive for users to find and consume the content they want. To me this means two things:
1) Make sure that anyone, regardless of the device they are using, can reach your full web site AND your mobile site. Too many content providers, having created a mobile version of their site, redirect all mobile users to the mobile site with no way to get the full site. This is presumptuous and anti user. That user may be a village doctor in Zambia looking up information critical to a patient's survival, information that's not on a mobile site. A related problem is that many sites route unrecognized mobile browsers to the full site. The databases driving mobile browser detection and content adaptation can never be 100% complete, there are just too many devices, in too many markets with new ones being released almost daily.
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posted by Dennis Bournique
November 24, 2007 @ 12:10 am
7 View Comments
