Take a look around you now. Who has a mobile within a metre of them? The answer is probably everyone.
Research from GSMA’s real-time tracker puts the number of mobile devices at 7.22 billion whilst the US Census Bureau says the number of people is still somewhere between 7.19 and 7.2 billion. No other technology has impacted us like the mobile phone. It’s the fastest growing manmade phenomenon ever.
Believe it or not, 37% of websites are not compatible for smartphones.
Making your website mobile friendly can be done in two ways.
Option 1: Mobile Site
This essentially means creating a duplicate version of your website on a different domain to make it mobile friendly.
For example, www.mobile.websitename.co.uk as well as www.websitename.co.uk
Although having a mobile version of your website isn’t the easiest way to make it mobile friendly there are a few advantages.
- You could make the mobile version of your site as AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) which are far more light weight and have some SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) benefits.
- Another advantage to having a mobile version of your site can be easier if you already have an existing website and do not want to develop on to your current site.
- No restrictions on design and functionality because the website is being built for mobile device and does not require adaptions for a desktop or tablet.
Although there are some slight disadvantages too.
- This creates double the amount of work, double the amount of SEO as you have two websites to maintain.
- If you make any amendments to your existing website it has to be changed on both websites separately, therefore if you are using an external company this would incur more costs.
This option would be suitable for companies who find their customers view their website via a smartphone rather than the desktop. This means the focus can be on developing the mobile website purely for the platform it is required on.
Option 2: Responsive Site
Responsive design is the preferable method for making your website mobile friendly as it allows your webpages to scale for small devices like smartphones whilst scaling through to a tablet and as far as the size of a television.
Responsive design is integrated within your existing website, allowing you to hide and manipulate elements of your website to fit a mobile screen.
Some benefits include:
- Your responsive website can easily benefit from SEO, similar to AMP however you don’t have twice the amount of work.
- Responsive design will benefit your site overall, building traffic to your site and making it accessible for anyone who visits your site.
We recommend the best option to make your website mobile friendly is choosing a responsive website as creating a separate mobile version can cost more money in the long run as well as taking longer to maintain.
Here at The Studio 4 we have a team of dedicated and experienced web developers who are able to offer mobile friendly website in both options mentioned above. If you’re looking for these services, please get in touch with one of our developers on 01952 234004 or email contact@thestudio4.co.uk.
References:
https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/