Making Your Mobile Site Truly Accessible
Mobile web design is a major concern for businesses today. Many businesses have adaptable or responsive designs in place of having a separate mobile design for their website, as their Web server will simply offer the correct site for the visitor, depending upon the device detected when the visitor arrives.
Making a mobile version of a website may entail more than just having a responsive web design, however. Part of good design takes into account the way that someone uses a technology. Putting that use factor first can help make sure that your website is not only accessible on a mobile device, but that it is actually useful, as well.
Consider Alternate Content
You may want to consider having alternate content available for mobile device users. Remember that the content you have written for a webpage may be very short and to the point, provided that the visitor is reading that information on a desktop screen. On a mobile device, getting through that same amount of content may require a lot of scrolling and the content itself may take up what amounts to many different pages on the visitor’s screen.
Having shorter, more bite-sized versions of your articles may be a good idea if you’re really trying to reach out to the mobile market. For example, if your company has been using the same homepage for years and it has a 300-word article on it, you may want to consider shortening that up so that users on mobile devices can see what the page is about and immediately determine where they want to go from there.
Images, Flash and HTML5
Image content and Flash can both make a site a lot more appealing. On a mobile device however, they can both make a site a lot less appealing. If you are using a separate mobile version of your website, consider eliminating as much image content as possible. While images and Flash may look great on tablet computers, they simply take up space and make it more difficult for the user to navigate on smaller mobile devices, such as smartphones. Also, remember, that Flash may not work on some tablets and other devices, so it may be better to use HTML5.
Remember that using an adaptive design or a mobile version of your website is essentially altering the delivery mechanism for your content. In addition to utilizing these resources, you may want to alter the content itself, as well, so that it is better suited for the mobile market and more amicable to users who prefer to surf the Internet on smartphones and tablets.
Get in touch with us if you need help in this matter.
