Optimising your online content for mobiles

Once your organisation has decided to post content online, it is important to consider optimising it for access by mobile platforms.

There is a high uptake of mobiles in Australia, particularly smartphones (phones that make it easy to access data such as online content).

There are two options your organisation can explore to optimise your online content for mobiles.

Establishing a mobile version of your website

While many mobile devices can browse entire web pages, the small screen often makes viewing content and navigation around a site more difficult than it is on a regular computer.

As mobile devices proliferate, there is an increasing trend towards offering content on web pages designed specifically to suit the small screens and navigation techniques of mobile devices.

A common way of approaching this is to run a second website that shares the same essential content but presents it in a simpler fashion. Often these “mobile version” websites have the same domain names but use a different prefix in place of the “www.”, such as “m.” meaning mobile, or “wl.” meaning wireless. Even if you do not have a mobile device you can see how the mobile site looks by typing the mobile version of the domain name into your web browser.

When implementing content for mobiles in this way, you can automatically direct mobile devices to the mobile version of the site even when visitors enter your regular domain name into the browser on their mobile device.

Even when you present content in a form specifically presented for mobile devices, it is good practice to offer the visitor the ability to choose to view your standard site from their device.

Developing a mobile app

There are many thousands of mobile phone applications now available through major applications stores, such as Apple’s iTunes, the Google Android Store and Nokia’s Ovi Store. These allow people to use a mobile device to access information from websites, book taxis, read news articles and other material and many other activities.

Mobile apps differ from the mobile web in that apps are normally developed specifically for individual mobile phone operating systems or platforms such as the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, or Symbian. Mobile apps differ from the mobile web in that mobile apps are normally developed specifically for a certain mobile phone operating system or platforms such as the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, or Symbian etc. The 2010 Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index found that 41% of survey respondents had downloaded and installed an application on their mobile phone.

Most apps are provided to users for low or no cost and can be strong marketing tools to support your business. They can boost your online presence and increase your communication with partners, customers or donors.

A growing number of small businesses and community organisations are developing their own mobile apps to offer new ways of serving and connecting with past, current and potential clients and supporters.

Before deciding to create your own mobile app you need to think about what value it will offer to users and how it will benefit your organisation. Many successful mobile apps fit into one or more of these four categories: apps with unique content (text, photos, animation, video); apps that entertain; apps that extend your brand; and apps that provide a useful utility.

The dependency on a specific operating system (as listed above) may limit a user’s adoption of a mobile app. However, the advantages that mobile apps have over mobile websites include the ability to design them to take advantage of hardware features in particular devices, ready promotion through mobile app stores and ease of use on mobile devices that are not connected to the internet.

A user’s adoption of mobile apps can be restricted due to the apps dependency on a specific operating system. The user might have one of a number of different mobile phone operating systems. However, mobile apps do have some advantages over mobile websites. Mobile apps can be designed to take advantage of hardware features in particular devices, can be promoted through mobile app stores such as Nokia’s Ovi store or Apple’s iTunes, and can be easier to use on mobile devices that are not connected to the Internet.

To develop your own mobile app you may need to commission a software developer. Developing mobile apps usually costs more than building a basic website does.