Accessing the Web from a mobile phone is not a new idea. Data transmission standards were defined in the early days of GSM – over a decade ago. The first round of mobile browser wars was fought long before devices had color displays. Transcoding solutions were deployed by browsers, carriers and even search engines like Google. In those days, getting readable Web content on a phone was a victory no matter how it looked – the baseline mobile experience was a blank page that never finished loading.
Enter the iPhone/Android/Palm Pre era. Most websites still really suck on mobile – research proves it – but one thing has changed drastically. The baseline mobile experience is surfing the desktop website using the pan & zoom approach. Now, any mobile publishing service has to provide an experience superior to accessing the full site on an iPhone-like device.
The overall impression visitors get is defined by look & feel, content accessibility, navigation and load times – items familiar to any mobile UI expert. However, not delivering on any one of them can provoke an “opt-out” by the mobile user, falling back to the cumbersome yet familiar full site experience.
Mobify measures opt-out rates for mobile views it powers. There is a strong correlation between the amount of thought a web designer puts into the mobile version and the size of their mobile audience. It’s incredibly pleasing to see the quality of the mobile views go up consistently. The future of mobile web gets brighter every time a web designer decides to take charge and improve experience for their visitors.
Screenshots: old baseline (Google Transcoder), new baseline (full site in Mobile Safari), current mobile design (m.spin.com by Mobify)
