26
Sep2009
Historically, most of the mobile views powered by Mobify have been from North America. Recently this started to change as users from all over the world are trying out the service. There’s been an explosion of interest from Iran, where mobile and Twitter compatibility are very important for any media channel. #1 blog in the Dominican Republic, newspapers from the Philippines and Russian football fans are all joining the Mobify family. What’s more, they’re bringing higher than average mobile traffic levels with them.
This raised a number of interesting issues. Sites in Farsi are read from right to left, occasionally throwing off CSS of the Mobify footer. Russian sites can use one of several Cyrillic encodings. Web access speeds in remote countries are far from stellar, impacting overall performance on mobile. In the end, it’s really exciting to be designing web services for the global audience and solving the variety of challenges that come up.
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16
Sep2009
Every now and again a web designer comes along that pushes the limits of what’s possible with Mobify. Matt Bango, a web designer at the New York Times, has done it for his mobile view – media-rich portfolio with some stunning photos (catch a glimpse in the Mobify Showcase – http://mobify.me/gallery/mattbangophotography/ ). Matt kindly answered our questions – see the answers below!
Why did you decide to take your website mobile?
Photographers and artists in general are becoming more interested in ways to uniquely share their work when they aren’t near a computer and don’t have a printed portfolio with them. The best solution is obviously some way to showcase their work on a mobile device. I decided now was the time to try to go mobile as the number of mobile devices is finally at a point where it is worth while to create a mobile version.
What was your experience with Mobify and how long did it take?
Mobifying my site was a breeze, I had my initial templates and a mobile version set up in 15 minutes once I had an understanding of the interface. I took another 1 – 2 hours to tweak and spend some time focusing on the details of my mobile site. Being able to select pieces of content from my site and letting the templates handle any dynamic content makes converting almost any site fast and painless. The “design” view is great for adding in any custom CSS and you get an auto-updated preview on the fly which makes testing very fast and easy. I couldn’t be more happy with Mobify and how easy it was and will continue to Mobify my other sites!
What mobile devices do you own? How do you browse the mobile web?
I own a iPhone 3GS and use Safari daily to browse to new content when I’m on the go. I usually find my interesting links via Twitter or my RSS reader, but occasionally will use mobile Safari just like I would if I were sitting on a computer. Safari on the iPhone makes it fairly easy to view non-mobile versions of sites, however it can get annoying and slow to constantly be zooming in and out to view content. I always prefer a mobile version of a site, even on the iPhone.
Good job Matt – keep on mobifying!
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11
Sep2009
One of the great aspects of Mobify is the need to only do as much work as you want to. Even though taking a whole site mobile does not take long, occasionally it is faster to do just the front page or another popular section that has particularly high mobile traffic. That’s exactly what Jonathan Aizlewood did for his company’s websites (full gallery entries available here and here).
Jonathan also answered some questions for us:
Why did you decide to take these websites mobile?
Our audience is a diverse international student body. With students arriving to study with us from all parts of the globe, we are well aware that mobile is becoming a popular method of reaching our content. We decided to experiment with creating mobile versions of the site to tap into those markets who are known to already use mobile devices to access our sites, for instance Italians who want to learn English in the UK.
How long did it take?
It took me about 2 -3 hours to mobify each site. Ridiculously easy, I was highly impressed once I got past the basic understanding of the interface.
What mobile devices do you own and how do you browse the mobile web?
Personally, I own an iPod touch and a Nokia E71, and browse sites on both many times a day. Due to the Nokia’s limited browsing capabilities (compared to the iPhone platform), browsing isn’t as easy, however Opera’s minibrowser is a treat. When using the Nokia I primarily use RSS and mobile apps for Twitter, Facebook, etc. For the iPod, browsing is much more straight forward, but mobile-enabled sites specific for the iPhone are always welcomed.
Thanks, Jonathan!
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7
Sep2009
A couple of months ago we blogged about the pros and cons of Mobile SEO, covering the subject of several listings per domain, different content available on mobile / desktop versions of the site and so on. In the couple of months that followed, we continued our trials & discussions with the biggest sites powered by Mobify. In the end, we arrived to a surprising conclusion – the best mobile SEO strategy today is the “noindex” directive for the mobile view coupled with 1:1 URL mapping from desktop to mobile and device detection. Here’s why:
1) Mobile views appear in desktop search results (which is probably a shortcoming of search engines, as well) pulling a share of traffic meant for desktop. In some cases, this traffic reaches 30% of the overall mobile view.
2) Thanks to device detection, mobile users hitting desktop links will always get the optimized, mobile experience.
3) With netbooks and other devices sitting in between desktop and mobile form factors, the line between various views of the same content is blurred. It is important for the content source to adapt automatically, without requiring a new SEO strategy.
To reflect this, all Mobify-powered mobile views will soon have “noindex” on by default, relying on search engine rankings of the full site and automatic device detection.
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