The world is mobile now. Global Smartphone shipments is breaking all records with Android emerging as the most powerful mobile OS capturing 82% of the total mobile market share alone. As reported by Techgig.com on 27th march, 2014 – Global Mobile Data Traffic is going to Surpass 15 Exabytes Per Month by 2018. In fact, research by various top firms revealed that people are increasingly looking forward to buy everything through their mobile phones and thus mobile purchases have seen a 30% hike in their growth year after year.

As a consequence of this mobile epidemic, it is natural to see more & more businesses jumping the bandwagon to go the mobile way and shifting all focus in developing a unique mobile optimization strategy for their existing web designs to cater to the big percentage of the mobile phone users. The reason being – nobody wants to risk sales and leads by showcasing a horrible story of tiny text, unclickable buttons and a completely messed-up layout before 55% of the global internet audience which is mobile. However, website owners still struggle with that one question – How to offer exclusive user experience on mobile phones?? So, if you really mind losing every 5th visitor to your competitor who already has a mobile strategy for his website, go through this article that talks about the three best mobile optimization methods that are pervasive in the market along with the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. At the bottom, I have also included some case studies which might help you in the long run.

The 3 Best Mobile Optimization Methods

When it comes to optimizing a website for mobile phones, there are only three options to choose from.

1. Responsive Web Design
2. Dedicated Mobile Website
3. Native Mobile App

Since, I believe all of you might have already heard about all of these methods before, I would not go in-depth to describe the differences and meaning. I have compiled a good list of pros and cons of every approach that will help you decide yourself which one is best. In case, you want to know more about Mobile UX Optimization, please go through one of my previous blogs – Mobile UX Optimization – Top 4 Tips to learn for better User Experiences that clearly explains the drastic differences in the usability aspects of a desktop, a tablet and a mobile.

Responsive Website – Pros

1. Responsive web design corresponds to a single website for every screen. Hence it becomes absolutely easier, less time-consuming & cost-effective to create, maintain and host just one website for all devices, all browsers and all screen resolutions. Moreover, the variety of gadgets, mobile specific browsers and platforms are increasing day by day and in such a scenario, it is practically impossible to get a separate design for each of them.
2. Google recommends Responsive web design as the best solution to serve the mobile audience. This is because, in a responsive website, there is only one URL that allows your users to find you on all devices. Hence it becomes easy for search engine crawlers to index content without encountering any duplicacy issues and errors. Plus, a single URL for your website doesn’t tend to confuse your customers and hence is an optimal solution both from SEO point of view and user’s point of view.
3. With only one website, you don’t need to work extra on any phase – may it be designing, development or testing. Thus a responsive solution turns out to be the most economical while saving you from hours of extra work at the same time. Plus, you need to market or promote only one website so you save the expenditure on Digital Marketing as well.

Responsive Website – Cons

1. With a single website for all devices, you may have to compromise on the exclusive mobile user experience. However hard you may try, you can’t offer 100% satisfaction to your customers with a responsive design. As per Al Hilwa – IDC’s program director of software development research, it is a misconception to believe that there is a one-size-fits-all platform which has no compromises. This is because there is a drastic difference between the usability aspects and the navigation characteristics (touch based and keyboard based gestures) of desktops, tablets & mobiles. Hence a single UI may not end up offering a good user experience despite delivering a good layout.
2. A responsive website loads too slow because of the time it takes to contact the server and responding after detecting the screen size of the device. This happens more frequently with the old & outdated browsers which don’t support responsiveness. In some cases, the site may not even load fully. Since, an average person who is browsing the web doesn’t wait much on a site; this can hurt your clicks and conversions to a great extent. According to Kissmetrics, after just 4 seconds of waiting, you are likely to lose 25% of your visitors to your competitors. So, to avoid any such blunders, it is highly advisable to test responsiveness of your website on various mobile emulators before going live with any responsive design.

Dedicated Mobile Website – Pros

1. A dedicated mobile website is the one that is specifically designed for mobile devices keeping in mind the technical constraints (touch based gestures), usability experiences (specific widgets for easy interaction) and limited connection speed of the mobile platform. Generally, the URLs of dedicated mobile websites start with a prefix “m”. For e.g. – m.your-site.com or mobile.your-site.com.
2. In a dedicated mobile site, all the focus is on the easy readability of content and hassle-free accessibility of features that are to be offered via a touch screen device. So the user experience that is delivered will amaze your mobile audience with its high end flexibility and fast loading speed.
3. A dedicated mobile site can be beneficial from SEO point of view if optimized correctly. Usually, for dedicated mobile sites, SEO experts place some code in the htaccess file that performs the user agent (device) detection. This allows the search engines to quickly detect that the device is mobile, and hence they scale their results to rank the mobile optimized sites higher. So a mobile optimized site is good for Mobile SEO.
4. If you compare a dedicated mobile site with a native mobile app, you will discover that a dedicated mobile site saves your users from the irritation of going through the download and installation phases – the case with every native mobile app.

Dedicated Mobile Website – Cons

1. A dedicated mobile website is not cost effective if compared to a responsive design. Plus, the advantages of a responsive web design generally outweigh the positive points of a mobile site. So if one needs to opt out amongst the two, it’s wise to go with a responsive design.
2. There are plethora of mobile devices as well and again you have to design your dedicated mobile site in a way that it delivers well on all devices i.e. in a little bit responsive kinda way. This is because the layouts & widgets may not be compatible with all small or large sized mobile devices. Plus, there is distinctiveness in terms of touch screen and keyboard (some mobile phones have a keyboard too) navigation.
3. Even if you create a dedicated mobile site, you will have to create another website to cater to your desktop users. However small the percentage of desktop users may be, but it is still considerably high that you can’t just ignore them completely. A responsive design can easily cater to both desktop and mobile users but a dedicated mobile site can’t cater to desktop users at all. Plus, apart from creating two websites, you have to manage and promote both of them separately. Hence it will add up to your project budget and the time.
4. Multiple URLs can give rise to additional SEO work. Also, since there will be two URLs, you need to redirect all your mobile surfers to the mobile optimized site which may take some time and the users may get irritated with this.

Native App – Pros

1. Excellent UX – A Native app offers better user experience as compared to both the above mobile optimization methods.
2. A Mobile App can operate both online and offline i.e. with internet connection or without internet connection respectively. It means that your customers will be able to access your information anytime anywhere. Both the above solutions – responsive web design and a mobile site can’t be accessed offline and this is another plus point of having a mobile app.
3. Native Mobile Apps have the tendency to load extremely fast on all mobile devices. Plus, you can create a unique mobile marketing strategy via inclusion of advertisements in your mobile app.
4. Your app is visible as an icon to your customer right on his/her mobile front end. Hence, if offered with a unique design & extra features, more & more people (friends’ community) can be encouraged to download & install it giving your brand a unique reputation and giving your massive mobile users a new way to engage with your products and services.
5. Since an app is a software, it can deploy some mobile specific features into the handsets of your customers which none of the above optimization solutions can do. For e.g. click to call buttons, GPS data or NFC tags, accessing the camera, contact lists, photo galleries etc.

Native App – Cons

1. No organic search techniques or SEO can work for your mobile app. An exclusive mobile marketing strategy needs to be carved out to market a Mobile App which is both costly & time-consuming.
2. Just owning a native app and not developing a responsive web design or dedicated mobile site will not do. A mobile app is not at all a complete replacement to a website. There are considerable number of desktop users also which you can’t completely ignore. So in either case, a mobile app has to be designed to complement your website and co-exist with it.
3. You will need separate mobile app for every mobile OS. Mobile apps are architectured in a way that they operate only on the specific OS for which they are made. For e.g. – there is a different app needed to cater to iPhone, another app for Blackberry and one more for android. So altogether, owning a native app is the most expensive solution amongst all the above optimization methods. Plus, to launch it in various App stores (Google Play, Blackberry App store and Apple’s App Store), you need to invest extra amount of money as well as time for their approval.
4. A mobile app offers zero flexibility as compared to other optimization methods as you need to come up with a new updated version every six months or even less. Plus, for all the updates you need to take approval from the app store again. So it’s really difficult and costly to manage a mobile app.

Now the question arises – Which one amongst all the three is the best approach to cater to the ever-growing mobile customers??

Well, the answer to this question lies within you. Don’t just take any decision in hurry and don’t just take anybody’s words for it. Find out the purpose of your business and do some market analysis on your targeted niche. Choosing the best solution wholly depends on your own business needs and specific requirements. Here I am discussing the most common cases with you.

Case 1 –If you are looking to establish your online presence in minimal possible time along with least expenditure –

RWD would be the best option for you. Not only a responsive website will support standard mobile devices but it would certainly answer most of your customer’s basic queries, location info, contact no, email address and so on. Later on when you grow big and establish a good online presence, you can think of getting a native mobile app in addition to a responsive design.

Case 2- If you have a small or a middle level business –

A dedicated mobile app is not recommended. Dedicated mobile apps can’t be indexed by search engines so there is no probability of yours reaching out to maximum no. of people via any organic search medium or results. Plus, since there are already thousands of apps flooding the app market, users may not find your app worth installing for just accessing the products and services unless it offers some extra usability which they think is important to them. Most often, getting a mobile app is advisable for well known businesses to which people already pay attention to. However, if you provide services like education on phone via tutorial mobile apps or you have the idea of an exclusive chat app, or if you own a restaurant business or a jobs board; spending on a dedicated mobile app may pour in dollars. This is because they make the day to day life easier for customers and thus if you have an exclusive strategy, you never know what fascinates your customers.

Case 3- If you have an ecommerce business –

For ecommerce businesses, it is highly recommended to have both – a well designed responsive website + a dedicated mobile app. This is because; shopping is one aspect that every person loves to do. And what else is more entertaining & time-saving than browsing thousands of products via touch, zoom and swipe both offline and online. If you own an exclusive online store that sells products which are unique, having a mobile app is a mandate if you don’t want to risk your sales and leads from the bulk mobile traffic.

The Final Note

From my personal experience, I would advise all the readers to keep in mind the 3 key mantras while choosing the best mobile optimization method –

1. Analyze your business goals and your purpose.
2. Stay on your budget and don’t just invest because others are doing.
3. Explore the targeted niche and the browsing habits of your customers.

I hope I have said much useful for you to decide on your own. However if you are still scratching your head determining the best web design strategy that’s right to go the mobile way, contact us for an affordable quote. In case, you want a complete makeover of your existing website for mobile phones, hire a virtual team of our experienced designers and developers to make your dream a reality.

The post Responsive Web Design vs Dedicated Mobile Website Vs Mobile App appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Say goodbye to the “one site fits all screen sizes” web development and design paradigm. According to the latest study conducted by the research firm Gartner, global PC sales decline by 1.2% in 2012 despite the much hyped launch of the Windows 8.

On the other end of the spectrum, another research by Gartner revealed that smartphones were up by 42.7% and a separate study by International Data Corporation (IDC) showed that the projected total sales for tablet devices in 2013 will breach the 170-million mark and is even predicted to outdo netbooks’ sales performance.

If you let these numbers speak for themselves, website design companies should hear loud and clear that the next gen SEO and SMO will be heavily anchored on responsive web designs.

SEO and SMO in a Post PC Era

According to tech media giant Mashable, they expect that mobile visitors will comprise more than 50% of their site’s total traffic by the conclusion of 2013. While this projection can vary from one industry to another, the point is mobile traffic is destined to gain momentum and capturing this on-the-go audience is crucial to success.

It was not too long ago that in order for a site to be optimized for the mobile audience, website design companies had to create specific layouts for different screen sizes across varying devices. Today, thanks to advancements in responsive web design tools and technologies, creating a website that automatically responds or adjusts to a specific screen size based on media queries.

Everything starts with proper coding. There are basically two approaches you can take in terms of responsive design. First, is to create layouts based on specifically identified screen size ranges. This is much simpler to do, but will only cover the most popular devices in a given time. The next approach is the fluid approach which takes into consideration percentages instead of the screen sizes. This is trickier and probably more expensive to do, but you are assured that your site is optimized for viewing for present gadgets and those that are yet to be released.

Why Can’t You Ignore Mobile in 2013

Different companies have different reason for not using responsive web design tools in their web development initiatives. Small businesses might say that they don’t need it because of their small operations while enterprises might say reason that they don’t see where mobile fits into their overall marketing strategy.

According to a presentation by Mary Meeker who is dubbed as the “The Queen of the Net,” 24% of all online shopping that place on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and one of the peaks in the US shopping season) was done using a smartphone or a tablet. Whatever your business size is, tapping into website design companies to bring your mobile marketing to the next gen SEO and SMO by using responsive web design tools is a sound business decision.

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The technology is progressing ahead at huge pace, and almost every month various new electronic gadgets get launched in the international market, and one of those gadgets is a smartphone.

In-fact smartphone is one of the most ‘in-demand’ products, as it provides the user with a flexibility to use high-speed internet on the go and stay in touch with his family and friends via email and other mobile applications such as WhatsApp, and also let him browse through websites that are useful to him.

However, for web designers it is one of the difficult tasks to cope up with as every other mobile phone, computer and laptop has a different screen size, which makes it difficult for him to design a compatible website. This is where the need for ‘Responsive Web Design’ comes.

A Responsive Web Design is something that plays a crucial role in the success of a website. A few years back, web designers never used to consider mobile phones, tablets, and different screens while designing a website, as only a few numbers of people used to carry them.

However, the situation is totally opposite now, and hardly there are only a few numbers of people who might not have a mobile phone or tablet to access internet, therefore, every website design should be responsive in nature, which eventually means that it should be able to get fit into any screen size be it a 3-inch mobile phone screen or a 19-inch desktop screen.

To make a responsive web design, the web designer must have three-way approach in which he needs to focus on a flexible grid, flexible images, and media queries. So let us begin with the Grid system and Background images.

Grid system and background images

Have you ever seen an online magazine? If not, then view it on your laptop or desktop and then try to view it on your smartphone, most probably you will see that the website’s size doesn’t fit in your mobile phone screen. That is because generally, magazine websites are not made using the grid system.

Therefore, to turn the design into a responsive web design, you need to implement the grid system and to make the layout flexible, the measurements should not be given in pixels, and instead, you should use percentage.

For example; if you keep the value of width as 50%, it will always be half of the screen the website is being viewed on, regardless of the screen size, and that is where flexible and responsive web design begins.

If you have a plan to use an image in the background, then you need to select the appropriate image or else you might end up wasting your time because photographs, vectors or any other images which can’t be tiled are not the appropriate ones to be used with a fluid grid system.

In addition to this, don’t use horizontal gradients either as they don’t scale well horizontally, the texture border also looks terrible. If there is something you can use easily and without any doubt then it is a texture only, which is easy to the tile such as grunge, grain, etc.

Trim down everything

While using the responsive approach to make web designs, you need to trim down everything be it the width or height of the web design.

Therefore, always try to use web elements in such a way that if the user has a small browser width he’ll still be able to view everything available on that page, and this could be easily achieved if you use a flexible wrapper made in percent rather than pixels.

Media Queries for desktop, iPhone and iPad

In general, media queries refer to the layout of the website and decide how it is going to be on the platform you are designing for.

The main problem of web designers it that they do not consider different types of mobile phone screen sizes while designing and only stick to the desktop and iPad screen sizes, and because of these modules the user face problems while accessing the website on mobile phones. Therefore, to make all the modules work according to the different screen sizes, the design has to be flexible, and this could be easily achieved or done by using the media queries in the right manner.

By now you must have understood how crucial your web design is in making the website successful by attracting a lot of web users via responsive web design and providing them with what they actually look for.

So, while designing responsive websites, it is important for you to take ample care so that the website fits on screens of all devices—laptops, desktops, mobiles, and tablets. Here are the following top trends for you to consider:

Using Vector Graphics

Discard Raster Graphics and instead use Vector Graphics. While Vector graphics use points on a vector map to build the design, Raster graphics use pixels on a bitmap to generate the design.

Vector graphics thus can be resized without losing the quality, unlike Raster graphics which lose quality on resizing. Vector graphics are crucial elements of responsive web design as they maintain clarity in mobiles, laptops and desktop screens.

Hidden Menus

As the style of homepages with minimal items is gaining popularity, hidden menus are becoming a new trend. It can be used in homepages for all kinds of gadgets, including mobiles, hidden menus involve a menu icon, which when clicked the navigation options appear.

One Paged Website

Websites with a single and long-scrolling page are the best suited for responsive design as these websites fit perfectly on screens of laptops, desktops, and mobiles. Typical single page websites have a navigation bar at the top, and when the links are clicked, the user is directed to the corresponding location on that page itself (instead of a new page).

Card-Based Design

The card-based design is an important part of the responsive web design technology because of the flexibility of rearranging the website by the screen size of the gadget. In such designs, pieces of information are organized in a grid pattern, involving ‘cards’, with images or texts, in visually appealing fashions.

Minimalism

Minimalism is the hottest responsive web designing technique prevailing today. The technique involves the reduction of clutter and simplification of the entire web page the best you can. The underlying idea is to offer the website to visitors in a simple and visually appealing way to draw interest and attention from visitors.

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