What are mobile websites?

In the future, mobile devices will overtake traditional computers as the primary devices for accessing the Internet. However, the majority of small businesses do not have a website suitable for mobile phones. It is imperative to provide customers and potential customers with a seamless and user-friendly experience using smartphones and tablets.

Mobile websites enable a competitive advantage

What are your possibilities for a mobile web design? This can be the implementation of a responsive website, which has advantages and disadvantages to ensure that your website is usable for mobile visitors. Another strategy for a mobile friendly web presence are mobile websites. Companies that use such an approach usually have two websites: A desktop or “full” site, which can be found under the normal website URL. They also have a separate site designed specifically for mobile devices. This usually runs under a URL like m.website.com or website.com/mobile. Visitors are automatically redirected to the appropriate website based on the type of device they are using (for example, an iPhone or laptop). Typically, a dedicated mobile website is a compressed version of a full desktop page. Content and features are optimized to help mobile visitors get information or take action as quickly as possible. Pictures, videos and large documents are usually largely removed due to bandwidth limitations

Advantages and disadvantages of mobile websites

On mobile websites you can create different experiences for users who are not sitting in front of a desktop computer, namely for users of mobile devices. Your web analytics and customer research may show that mobile visitors very often access certain information, such as your phone number or address. But they rarely read your press releases. Based on this research, your mobile website displays your contact information, click-to-call, and mapping capabilities. Press releases are removed because mobile visitors are not interested. Because a mobile website can be designed and developed independently of your main website, you can easily add a mobile-friendly website to complement your existing website. People expect websites to load in seconds. Mobile sites are smaller than desktop sites and contain fewer files to download. That means they load quickly on mobile devices. Also, a mobile website is not a data eater. This is a nice advantage for customers in terms of data volume. They dont have to worry about your website swallowing up too much of their data. But there are also a few disadvantages. For many people a “light” version of a website is not suitable. Smartphones and tablets arent always a “secondary” way to find information online. In some cases, they are the only way to search for information online. Therefore, all content and features must be available and accessible regardless of the device. Furthermore, the attitude that mobile users are completely different from desktop users is changing. More and more consumers are using multiple devices to search for information or complete tasks online. They could start with a laptop, then jump to their iPhone and then return to their laptop. Everywhere people want their experience to be seamless. Many expect the same content and features to be available regardless of the device they use. Then there is the problem of “messy” or confusing web addresses. With mobile websites, there is a risk that people will go to the wrong website address. Visitors should be redirected automatically. However, this is not always the case. It also becomes difficult if other websites link to your website. A desktop user might have the mobile version of a website, or vice versa, depending on where and how another person accessed and shared the link to that page. Two websites correspond to twice as many website updates. If you add 5 new products to your main website, you must also add 5 new products to your mobile website. Special mobile websites can be set up to update automatically when your main website is updated. However, this is not always the case.