Mobile Optimized Sites

I did a poll a while ago addressing the question of what devices people used during a typical day to do their e-mail.  The results were reported here and showed that 38.2 percent used their SmartPhones.  Given the dramatic increase in the use of SmartPhones, it becomes important to address the issue of website design.  Websites are normally designed to be accessed with a computer, a notebook, netbook, or desktop computer.  However, SmartPhones now have browsers that are capable of rendering full websites albeit in a rather reduced space.  It is pretty easy using touch gestures to increase the size of a part of the site that you're interested in and, in fact, you can also use a double-tap on the screen to resize a particular column for better viewing.  I normally do the latter on multi-column sites so that I can read the substantive column.

The issue arises then of whether developers of websites should provide mobile optimized versions of their sites and, if so, should the mobile version come up automatically when the site is accessed by a mobile device or should the user be given a choice by bringing up the normal site and including a button for accessing the mobile version?  I've changed my mind several times myself as to which of these I prefer.  If you're accessing this site with a mobile device, you'll know that I've already implemented the automatic launching of a mobile optimized version of the site.  

Please let me know whether you prefer sites to automatically launch a mobile version of the site, whether they should launch the normal site and give the user the option via a button of launching the mobile optimized version, or do you think sites are fine as they are and don't need mobile optimized versions?  I'd greatly appreciate it if you would leave a comment describing your preferences.

Comments

[Ward Andrews]

When a user arrives via smartphone and a smartphone optimized experience welcomes them it says some things to the visitor. It says, I know you and I know your circumstance and I am bringing you my content packaged for your circumstance. While it may be good to allow someone to toggle over to the typical web site, I think you should default to the device and situation of the user in the moment. I wrote more about this scenario in the context of designing for mobile news here: http://www.drawbackwards.com/mobile-news-design/

[John Hok]

I actually prefer that if I'm entering a URL for a website that I be taken to that website even on my smartphone. If I enter a specific address like m.facebook.com then of course I expect to have the mobile version of Facebook.

I guess the preference comes out of visiting some websites on my smartphone and not being able to exit out of their "mobile experience" and being forced to use a more crippled version of their website with no way out.

[JayDee]

In my mind, there's nothing wrong with getting the mobile version of a website. I like the idea of getting a low-bandwidth version of a website when I'm on a relatively low-bandwidth device -- especially when I'm on my iPhone, I don't want to wait for HUGE graphics to download, and complex pages to render.

This having been said, there should be a very large, very shiny button at the top of a page to take me to the full site.

Wikipedia has done quite a good job in this respect. The only snag I find is that I have no option to increase the microscopic font size they choose by default for mobile users -- using multitouch to try to zoom in does *nothing*.

[David Oliver]

I think there's no question that websites should provide mobile content, and present it in a way that's optimized for the mobile device. In the "old days" (yeah, I lived it -- at IBM -- for quite awhile) that we an impossible task, there were simply too many incompatible device types. Nowadays, you have the iPhone and Android (with Blackberry and Nokia finally catching on and getting WebKit-based browsers --- frankly no other mobile browser matters). More importantly, there are some tremendous toolkits now like JQTouch (http://www.jqtouch.com/) that make creation of mobile content incredibly easy.

the most important thing: the mobile web is a different beast compared to the desktop web. Very few designers "get" this, but this new world - created in essence by Apple's iPhone and it's app model - means that users have an entirely different expectation on their mobile device. It requires new and different expertise to create that right mobile user experience.

And, Gawd, please please please please don't use Flash!