Rise of the Mobile User and How You Can Adapt

The date, January 9, 2007. It was a controversial day, feelings of anxiousness and excitement clashed with feelings of envy and jealousy. It was a day to change the face of the mobile world. A day that would revolutionize the way content was designed, developed, and deployed across the globe. It was the day the world changed forever, the day of… the iPhone.

Ch Ch Ch Changes

With the revolution of the iPhone in 2007, the entire web based world has been evolving and adapting ever since. The way that content has been created and managed has drastically changed due to the increase of mobile users and their presence in the World Wide Web. Mobile is easy, it’s convenient, and it’s instant gratification. Consumers want convenience. Mobile gives the consumer what they want, when they want it.

Turn and Face the Change

Change is difficult and doesn’t always come as quickly and as easily as anyone would like. That being said, change is a necessity if you want to thrive in a web based world. Back in the infant stages of mobile browsing, mobile websites offered little more than an overview of its desktop counterpart and seemed to function as a bandage for a problem that would continue to grow. This worked fairly well. Users could visit the mobile site, have their interests peaked, and then visit the desktop site later in the day eventually fulfilling all of their hopes and dreams from your great desktop site.

Changes are Taking Place

As time has passed and technology has grown, so has the appetite of everyday mobile users. 58% of American adults have a smart phone, 42% own a tablet, and 63% of all cell phone owners use their phone to access the web according to a study performed by PewResearch. What does this mean? It means that if you have a website, you potentially receive quite a large amount of mobile traffic. Hopefully, your website has been designed optimized for mobile viewing pleasure. Otherwise, you may be missing opportunities to meet new clients and increase your businesses success.

Time May Change Me

As development and design have evolved with mobile browsing, so has the technology that is used to harness the mobile web. Cell phones now boast fancy new quad core processors, slick new designs with edge to edge HD displays, and offer more memory than some basic computers sold in stores. Design and development are always playing catch up with technology, but new designs strategies have proven to be very effective when it comes to the mobile browsing world. The old ways of design sacrificed content for functionality in hopes that the user would still visit the website on their desktop after their mobile experience.

Responsive Design

In today’s fast paced design world it’s important to maximize your employees resources to make sure your website is receiving the best design it can receive. One of the best ways to make your website responsive and great for mobile viewing is enabling your website to handle multiple screen resolutions. By enabling your website to be responsive to different screen resolutions, you can easily create a more enjoyable and hassle free experience for your mobile users. The reasons for implementing a responsive design that handles multiple resolutions are;

• Fat Fingers: Mobile users do not have the precision of a desktop mouse and the website should respond by making content scale with resolution size.

 

• Smaller Screens, Larger Text: The screen size of a desktop ranges from a screen size of 13” to the Dallas Cowboys Jumbotrons 159’ x 71’. Cell phones weigh in with a huge screen size of about 4.5” ensuring that most of your website’s text is smaller than most ants. As screens get smaller, your text should get larger to aid the user in reading your content. 
• Simplification: Websites to Adults are similar to big popup books for children. How do we peak the interests children? We make the books cool and interactive! Popup books are simple and fun to use, websites should offer the same enjoyable experience to adults. If I enjoy looking at your website, chances are I will spend more time there thanks to your responsive design.

Pique the interests of users and satisfy their curiosity as they navigate through your site. Encourage them to explore the site not because they have to, but because they want to. They should enjoy looking at your content because it’s well designed and responsive enabling any user on any device to view your website effortlessly. If your website is easy to use, then users will most likely enjoy using it!