REVISITING ASSUMPTIONS

Before embarking upon a discussion about the practicalities of developing mobile websites, let ’s
think about some of the opportunities that a mobile web brings and how it should encourage you to revisit many of the assumptions you may have made about today ’ s desktop web.

New places: Whether it ’ s on a train, waiting in line at a bus stop or an airport, walking down a street, working in the fields, lounging on the beach, or snatching glances while driving a car, humans now have the opportunity to access websites from a whole host of new locations — places where it is impractical or impossible to use a desktop or laptop computer. The desktop web gets used from home, the office, and possibly café s and kiosks, but places and situations where users can access the mobile web are innumerable. Think how you can adapt your services and content to cater to people visiting your site from these novel contexts, and with the rise of geolocation capabilities in some modern browsers, you can even start to key your content off them.


New users: The mobile web creates the opportunity to place web content into the hands of new users altogether. It is easy to think that everyone has regular access to a computer connected the Internet, and in some developed markets and for certain demographic groups, that ’ s true. But the availability of fi xed Internet access is already dwarfed by that via mobile devices. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) estimates that there are 13.6 mobile 3G subscriptions for every 100 people (compared to 8 fi xed broadband connections). But even that is just the start: Only 1 billion of the world ’ s 5.3 billion mobile subscribers have 3G connections. If that proportion grows rapidly over the current years, there will be literally billions of new mobile web users around the world. Suffice to say that this sheer volume can be a huge opportunity for site owners to capitalize on.


New marketing, new business models: The mobile web provides a new way to reach potential
and existing customers. If you run an online business, or an offline one that relies on online marking and promotion, this can significantly open the possibilities for you to grow and
develop your business. Through localized and targeted mobile advertising, you can reach users who are perhaps more in need of your services than ever (a web search for “ plumber ” on a mobile device might imply that the user is in more urgent need of service than from a high - and - dry desktop browser!), and location - based social networks providing check - in functionality (such as Facebook, foursquare, and the like) look set to offer exciting new ways to promote and market certain types of businesses. But the mobile medium itself provides the opportunity for new fulfillment and business models altogether. From phone - based voucher techniques, to games with in - app purchasing, to near - field communication - based commerce, the mobile device offers new ways to interact with customers and create business opportunities.


New types of relationships: Often overlooked is that fact that the mobile web is a medium viewed through the screen of what many consider to be a highly personal piece of consumer electronics. With them all the time and normally held close to their body, the mobile phone is more to many users than simply another gadget: It is their primary link with their friends, their families, and their online lives. A computer rarely engenders as much love and care as a mobile phone, and many believe that this can be an important facet to consider when developing mobile web services. Bland, impersonal web pages might jar with a user ’s perception of what his mobile device represents; he may expect the mobile web to be more immersive, more customized, more personal, and more social. As a site owner, you need to consider how your online presence can capitalize on this more emotional relationship between the user and the medium.


One final point is arguably more important than all of these, and it ’ s one that sows the seeds for
you to be able to really explore the possibility of the mobile web: The mobile phone is so much more than simply a piece of hardware upon which a lonely browser runs. Today ’ s mobile devices are truly the Swiss Army knives of modern society: a phone, an address book, a calendar, a camera, a music player, a compass, a messaging terminal, a game console, and now a web client.

Even if it simply results in ensuring that your business website has a click - to - call link with your telephone number (so the user can dial you straight from the page), keeping this fact in mind is an important step in crafting the shape of this new medium. Using geolocation; allowing social media interactions with users ’ friends and contacts; uploading photos directly from a camera; building web applications that respond to phone orientation, temperature, light levels — the list of ways in which a mobile device could be a more capable web client than a desktop one is almost endless. It ’ s true that this is still an area of much standardization work (privacy and security are important considerations, of course). But what is truly exciting about the potential of the mobile web is that you have barely glimpsed at the possibilities gained by aligning web - based services with the diverse capabilities of these amazing little devices.

Source of Information : Wiley - Professional Mobile Web Development with WordPress Joomla and Drupal