Mobile Friendly Websites - Who has one?

[David Chamberlain]

Hey

I've been lurking here for quite a while now and have picked up some great ideas and learned a lot..

(So thanks everyone)!

Anyway...

Yesterday I got a call from somebody trying to sell me a mobile friendly website - now I usually ignore any sales calls, but I thought I'd see what he had to say...

I can definitely see the benefit (things like instant calling/click to call makes it easier for people to call you..)

I just wanted to get some opinions before I jump in and spend money!

Do you have a separate site for mobile users? If so - is there anyway I can build my own?

Thanks in advance for any help!

David

[paul]

I don't but I've considered it.

What were they offering to do and for how much?

Some people just run your site through some conversion wizard that does all the work for them (probably badly). Others will be a bit more diligent - probably more effective and more costly.

If you know a bit about web design, I don't see any reason why you couldn't do it yourself...
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Luxury Travel - Lake District Apartment

[Kay]

I've noticed that some of our sites are getting more visitors accessing via mobile devices too, so this is something I also considered doing. However, when I asked around the general consensus seemed to be that as mobile devices become more sophisticated, they can handle 'normal' websites better, so there's probably no need at this stage to go to the expense of creating a specific mobile friendly website.

Whatever you decide, don't do business with a spammer. It just encourages them to be a nuisance to other people if they think they can do business out of it. Yeah, I know you said you got a call, but it's still an unsolicited sales message and that counts as spam for me.

[Langdale]

Although I can't show it here, I'm not allowed to post links yet, my web site is mobile friendly! It uses 'Responsive' design to achieve this.

Type 'holiday-home.uk.com' into the Google address bar. You should get to it. When you get to the home page, reduce the size of the browser window so it's about the size of an iphone. You will note that the layout changes, even the menu options change...

This is Responsive design in action. In this approach you use 'media queries' and 'style sheets' to target the client machine; mobile, smart phone, Pad, Laptop, Desktop, etc.

It takes a little more effort and requires a little more thought but you can make your web site 'friendly' to all devices at once. Your clients will love you for it!

[paul]

Just a small point (but kind of a big point also), but I did what you suggested...

Well, kind of. I looked at the site on my laptop, and then went straight to my iPhone.

One thing that struck me about the iPhone version is that the navigation is not immediately obvious. From what I can tell, you need to click on the grid of bars in the top right hand corner to get access to other pages. Maybe something to think about...
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UK Hotels - UK Selfcatering
Luxury Travel - Lake District Apartment

[Langdale]

Fair point!

I've had a quick tinker and if you look at holiday-home.uk.com/index-test.html on the iphone you should see the menu across the top. I guess this is a little easier to understand so should work. Though I'll need to tinker a bit more because I broke the non mobile device pages by tinkering, but it shouldn't be a big issue.

However, I am intending to include a couple of extra menus on the mobile version, namely restaurants and pubs and later still a walks page, so all this will need a rethink!!!

Anyway, you raised a valid point and thanks for the input, I'll work on towards an acceptale soution.

[paul]

Yes... that works much better on the iPhone now...

The fact that it then goes and breaks something else is just of the joys of computers, I guess.
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UK Hotels - UK Selfcatering
Luxury Travel - Lake District Apartment

[globalart4u]

i have difficulty reading mobile friendly sites anyway and they drive me nuts as i need a magnifying glass just to work out and the navigation so haven't bothered yet
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[Mat34]

I'm only making sites using the latest Wordpress responsive themes now. They instantly get adjusted to look right on iPhones. I think it may harm rankings not having a mobile version in some cases. Rankings are certainly much lower for one site I'm working on which doesn't have a responsive or mobile version. I've found the free Wordpress mobile site plugins can ruin the site, for example remove all the navigation links so people can't change pages easily. Its a tricky situation as mobile traffic is only going to grow.

[kraldmark]

I don’t have a separate mobile site. All depends on your customers. You can get data from your online website and analyze which device of your user use most. Additional, there are few companies provide free service for mobile site.