Mobile is huge right now. Particularly hot are applications and there are plenty of examples which elicit the response of, “That is really neat”. It is always very clear when businesses understand how mobile can be used in effective ways.
However, this blog is going to concentrate on web content on mobiles for the moment.
There seems to be a pervasive atmosphere that web sites MUST adapt to mobile or they are going to die. This is the ‘all or nothing’ response to advances in technology which assumes that the next best thing is going to destroy everything that comes before it. This is nonsense, of course. History has shown that sites just evolve to adapt to advances in the internet and when they have failed it has been down to the business model, not that they were a bit slow with social media or the latest whizzy AJAX and jQuery magic.
Do you remember when WAP was hot? Web pages (just about) on your mobile phone! If you don’t have a WAP site you are going to be left behind! I even worked for a startup which specialised in software to rewrite content on the fly for best display on different devices. A bold new era!
Was WAP a panacea? No. It was slow. It was ugly. Mobile displays were small and typically not in colour. Navigation was poor. It was an exercise in frustration. Technically WAP still exists but it is so dated now that using the past tense feels strangely appropriate.
Mobile technology has moved on. We now have large, colourful screens and pretty well featured web browsers. Touch interfaces and/or decent keyboards are present. The underlying communications layer is FAST – be it 3G or Wifi. It is possible, although sometimes a little painful, to navigate ‘normal’ web sites which have not been optimised for mobile.
There is now a land grab to ensure optimised sites. What are you optimising for? Well, the iPhone naturally features heavily and Android is surging strongly forward but there are lots of different devices out there. There are many challenges in optimising a site; it isn’t just about design and putting graphics in the right place. The whole user experience must be considered as certain tasks are just going to be DIFFICULT on a small screen and without a mouse. It is possible to rethink interfaces but there is a limit as to how far you can go.
The iPad is now with us and bringing tablet computing that bit closer to the masses. It is another step in making it easier to navigate the web when mobile. Large screen! Speed! Looks cool to be using it when in a coffee shop!
The way the technology curve is going, it is clear that mobile devices are going to catch up with the web first. It is not the case that the web must pander to the current crop of mobile devices (although they will in the short term, of course).
Look forward five years. Perhaps less. Imagine an iPhone-sized device than when you press a button magically expands to become iPad sized. Science fiction? In the days of WAP the prevalence of devices such as the iPhone and iPad would have been thought of in the same way.
Businesses should concentrate on their core web sites and products first. It will always be worthwhile considering mobile (particularly the application state) but be very wary of getting caught up in the land-grab without consideration of what the end result will be… especially when the mobile devices are going to evolve and give you what you seek for free later on.