Tips to Develop Effective Mobile Websites

In the last few years there has been a paradigm shift in the way people access the Internet and this has been led by the advent of Smartphones. The BlackBerrys, the Androids and the iPhones are contributing substantially to the traffic in any website. Within a few years mobile browsing is likely to take the lead over traditional desktop browsing. Thus mobile websites are crucial to the marketing and promotion of your business. Mobile site design needs to be handled with creativity and technical expertise as you need to offer users a complete browsing experience within a small screen size. Here are some important tips which should be incorporated for an effective mobile website design.

• Simplicity – This is the most important thing when it comes to creating robust mobile websites. Mobile web design needs to be executed in a completely different way compared to the desktop version. Due to the small screen size you need to prioritize different elements which appear in the website and cut down on certain elements which are low on priority. Optimizing the images and any multimedia elements with a small screen size in mind. The idea is to design a fully functional mobile version of the main website with a simple interface.

• Easy Navigation - The navigation should be easy and you should design the mobile version of the website with no more than 1 level down sub-index pages as users often find it very difficult to reach the inner pages. Do away with unnecessary navigation and excessive scrolling and stick to a single column structure in your mobile site design. Also minimize the user inputs as this helps make the mobile website more user-friendly.

• Responsive Design – Different mobile phones have a variety of different screen sizes and resolutions so the ideal solution should be to create a responsive design. This translates to liquidity in the way the website renders on the phones. Here the site detects the device being used to browse, its screen size and resolution and renders a compatible version to give an easy browsing experience to the user.

• Platform Compatibility – There are different mobile platforms such as iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone etc. which are used to access mobile websites. Your site should be compatible with ALL these platforms as this would allow you to reach out to the largest user base possible. You can also try creating applications which are specific to these platforms which would additionally improve browsing experience of the users.

• Choose Appropriate Colors – Color plays an important role in increase the popularity of the mobile site. You should create a perfect contrast between the background and the foreground elements of the site which allows users to clearly distinguish between the different elements of the website to increase its usability and popularity.

You really need hire the services of a web design company which has actual expertise in designing custom mobile websites not just traditional desktop websites. Take a look at their Mobile Design portfolio as this will give you a sense of their expertise. Also make sure they develop the mobile site to be compatible with all the major browsers and platforms as this is important to increase the marketability of your mobile website.

Jill Barnett - About Author:
Razor Micro, Inc. builds Mobile Websites for smartphones. Get 100% user friendly Mobile Website Design at affordable price.

Article Source:
http://www.articleside.com/web-design-articles/tips-to-develop-effective-mobile-websites.htm

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