Introduction to the Mobile Web

When you bring up a web site on a mobile device, why doesn't it look like it does on a regular web browser? These devices have size and memory limitations that put an absolute limit on what content will be readable on them. Today's typical web sites have moved far away from the adherence to strict standards that was prevalent in the web's early days, and are usually designed to look good only under very narrow circumstances: Internet Explorer, Windows, 1024x768 screen resolution, broadband connection. Often they rely on Javascript & Java, Flash, graphical menu buttons, imagemaps, Dynamic HTML, CSS and other flashy technologies that make the site look neat on a computer screen, but make it unreadable on a small screen.

The makers of these small devices and their web browsers have tried very hard to make their products display "regular" web sites, but it just isn't happening, and even though the next few years are surely going to bring slightly larger screens, faster processors, and more memory, but it's unlikely to change the dynamics. The only way for web sites to be readable on these small devices in the foreseeable future, is for the makers of these sites to take small devices into consideration during the design phase.

But never fear! Just because your current web site looks terrible when browsed on a mobile device doesn't mean all that hard work was for nothing. If your site looks good on a conventional browser, that's great. In many cases we can fix it so that the very same data that's being displayed on your current web site is displayed on a parallel mobile-friendly site, requiring little to no change in your process of keeping the site updated, and requiring absolutely no effort on your customer's part. In fact, you don't even need a special URL for mobile users. The backend PHP/ASP/Perl code can be configured to automatically serve the mobile-friendly version to mobile users, merely by reading the identifying information that their browser sends when they request your site. For some real-world examples of this, please look at our portfolio or our demos.

You might say, "well, sure, sometime in the future I'm sure we'll see lots of people using mobile devices to access the internet, along with flying cars, 3D holographic telephones, and all that other sci-fi stuff. But why would I need to do this now?" The truth is, depending on your site's target audience, you may not need to do it now. That's a bit of candor that you're not likely to hear in a sales pitch, but we admit that it's true. We'd be happy to consult with you to help you determine how much, if any, of your current site's content should be formatted for the small screen. If you decide to postpone it, that's fine, because we believe very strongly that mobile internet use will explode over the next five years, and we'll still be around in a couple of years when your customers are starting to revolt and you're compelled to make the switch (and we're sure our rates will be much higher by then, so it will all work out in the end for us, don't worry).

But let's look at some statistics: According to the ITU, there are now approximately 1.5 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide; that's one quarter of the human population. Twice as many people today use mobile phones as use the internet. In the developed world, while mobile phone use has plateaued, with adoption nearing 90% in many Western countries, the transition from "2G" voice-only systems to 3G (high data speed) or 2.5G (medium data speed) systems is almost complete. Almost all phones sold today in the U.S. include a color screen and some way of accessing the web. According to this recent study, in total, 13 percent of mobile subscribers in USA reported accessing news and information via a mobile browser in February 2005. You do the math about potential customer-reach you may be missing out!

If current trends continue, over the next decade, even more people will use their phones to access the internet than personal computers -- this reality has already come to pass in Japan. Today it would be unthinkable for most businesses to not have a web site. During this time of rapid adoption of mobile web technology, do you really want to be serving up a screen full of gibberish to your most leading edge customers?