Mobile Web Strategies Blog

I have been very busy end of the year with a lot of projects including a thesis for Information Business degree at Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences. Besides all the ups and downs of study, family and work I have decided that I will commit myself to write at least 1000 words per day in order to have all my projects including the blog taken care. Let’s see how it comes up. The topic of the day is the title of the post that is: What to consider when designing or purchasing a mobile site or app? 1. Who will use your site or app? Without knowing who is your target group and knowing basic things about them you won’t go too far.  That is what in UX (User Experience) term means building PERSONAS. Personas should be real users with their complete profiles. Ok, now you might think – you lost me in this one, how do I do that? Well, that is easy. You have the mobile app and site idea.  Who is the first person that comes to your mind that you see using your app...

Today I am sharing a slideshare presentation of the Norwegian designer Ida Aalen because many of the topics she speaks on her presentation I have already been talking of the last months on other articles of this same blog. Topics such as: 1. User-centered design and that whoever shout the most win and it is often the user. 2. Mobile first and that design for mobile should come first. (See earlier articles on this subject in this same blog). I specially like her analogy when she mention the book Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski " If it's not important enough to put on mobile, is it important to put on the desktop?" 3. Responsive Design and that browser landscape becomes bigger and smaller at the same time with same content on all platforms and the need for adaptative presentation that are future-friendly. From the book on Responsive Design by Ethan Marcotte. I highly recommend Ida's presentation and to make it easy to see I am making it very user-friendly and embe...

Most of IT companies don’t see UX (User Experience) should be at the heart of everything they do which leads to their inability to present and sell UX as the starting point of any project. UX in most case is sold as an “extra” service while they should be seen as the starting point of any IT business strategy. UX is everything - it starts with the customers, go deeper to their customers and it should end with them in mind! What UX really is? UX is a business and digital field in itself. The misconception here is that most people think of UX as just usability. Usability though is simply how easy to use and simple the website functionalities are to the end user. For usability we have plenty of best practices already in place and even standardized. Bear  in mind that usability is only part of UX! UX is a continuous work that starts by what customers want to accomplish with their site, and not how they want the site to be , unless they are the ultimate end user of the site...

HTML5 MISCONCEPTION Nowadays any new browser capability or web application technique found across the web is labeled as HTML5 and that is not true. Michael Mahemoff said that HTML5 has become a brand that represents a new type of web application rather than the specification itself. In order to learn HTML5 is very important to understand what really HTML5 is. It is common nowadays hear CSS transitions, web sockets, geolocation, SVG, CSS @font-face all mentioned under the HTML5 banner and label all under HTML5 "brand".  In the specification none of those mentioned are found for the simple reason that they either belong to the CSS3 specification or other API specification within the WWW Consortium. Websites are and will be built with a combination of HTML5, next-generation APIs, JavaScript and CSS3, which means that as a designer or developer the difference between those technologies must be clear and how they fit together should be understood. What is really HTML5? ...

REAL USABILITY MATTERS - Usability is one of the single most important thing you can do to ensure success and money. Any design should have the user in mind, however when we talk about small screens this is a must. The Google presentations  What is a mobile site and why do you need one?  try to give business people and even developers the awareness that mobile sites nowadays is a must - but if they are build without the user in mind there is not use to have it. Their case studies are interesting. Mobile-friendly web apps help businesses: To connect with their customers Increase Revenues Reduce Costs because when sites are optimised and user-friendly you give your customers means to get what they want instead of wonder around, get tired and go to your competitor. The catch is that the only way to accomplish that is to invest in Usability. IT IS ALL ABOUT USABILITY. Improved usability makes you INCREASE YOUR MARKET SHARE - the like effect...

Mobile Friendly Contact Forms The way to go for mobile friendly contact forms is the touch-friendly CSS styling in order to make the buttons, controls and inputs with touchscreen experience. 1. Large touch target areas will definitely improve the form input fields 2. Other forms of input can also greatly benefit from input controls with CSS styling 3. HTML5 input types should be use to trigger keyboard events to aid the user on having  a great experience. Depending on the input type selected mobile browsers have different on-screen keyboards for different froms of data that should be taken into account. Just by including in the label the type="" and inside the quotes tel for phone numbers, url for websites, time for time, date for the date, e-mail for email we can make the keyboard behave accordingly with is very useful. I constantly came across mobile websites that make me look for the @ when I have to enter my e-mail, or any other type of data that is n...

THE REALITY OF RESPONSIVE DESIGN TO THE MOBILE SCREEN (The mobile analysis was done based on the sites presented on  mediaqueri.es .) Here you can see how responsive design are great for some desktop and tablets but might be a bad choice to communicate what your business is and what the user can do in the tine mobile screen. Check for yourself snl.no the big picture with the search in my Nokia Lumia gets the whole screen just for search, to see the rest, what the site is about and what it offers me as a user I have to scroll down. It could be better design for mobile, but this is a good responsive design for desktop and tablets. Another one is Suffandnonsense.co.uk the image when you open is the whole screen, to see what the site is about I have to scroll down. It could be better done for mobile but it is very good for desktop and tablets. You can check for yourself on your mobile all of the sites - this is good exercise to see that pictures might speak m...

This is a Slideshow RETHINKING THE MOBILE WEB by by Yiibu Author: Bryan Rieger (September 10, 2010)

I came across a very interesting website quirksmode.org in the Mobile section that explain beatifully in many parts what I believe that is the problem with mobile web design nowadays. I will be copying what I think is the most important points here. Some I might discuss but you will understand the probem when you read it. MOBILE WEB DEVELOPERS DOING THEIR JOB? The unique selling point of the web is that it runs on all devices; and not just on one platform. But it seems mobile web developers aren’t much interested in reaching out beyond one or two specific platforms. Developers should reach out to as many paltforms as humanly possible instead of confining themselves to the best ones. WHY ARE WEB DEVELOPERS INTERESTED IN MOBILE SO RELUCTANT TO VENTURE OUT BEYOUND THEIR iPHONE CONFORT ZONE? Mobile web projects for large companies are based on requirements written last year, during the height of the iPhone obsession. In addition, the iPhone’s share of mobile web traffic remains...

Yes, responsive design frameworks are a good thing but it all depends on your website. Remember there is no one solution for all and if you can use a framework to make a responsive design for all it will depend if you have a content base site and if your site is not "user-specific interaction dependent". I have watched the Sitefinity webinar (embbedded below) and the tool is very useful for creating Responsive Design and even mobile that is content base such as magazines, newspapers and any other website that does not require the user to do a specifc thing on the site. The added bonus on the tool is that the user edit blocks of layout template that is not table based and their text clean out any style done by text processors - this is a tool build with the user experience in mind. However as Sitefinity presenter said himself at the end of the webinar "Responsive Design is not a complete solution..., there is still a lot of granulatity..." You can hear ...

In my earlier post about the differences between Responsive Design and Mobile Web App I have talked about two of the three approaches for mobile web app: The second that is Responsive Design and the third that is Mobile-Specific , but what about the first? Here is the first approach that is not recommended but depending on the website, its design, its content and its purpose, it might be ok. 1. "Do nothing" approach This approach is the one which desktop content is served to the mobile device unaltered. This is unfortunately the most used approach for mobile around the world, however it is changing fast. The good side of this approach is that it is less work to do and no need to maintain, however it is not an optimal choice regarding user experience and nurturing your customers. This approach is good for lightweight pages that have flexible content and that is arrange in such a way that it is not totally zoomed out and is easy to read when tabbing twice the text. ...

RESPONSIVE DESIGN is a way to make the same desktop website change through different CSS stylesheets. The HTML site is nothing more than text wrapped within tags that has no style whatsoever.  When we include some meta tags within the head in the HTML document that limits the range of sizes recognized for tablets and for smartphone applying for both different CSS stylesheet built for specific for tables and for smartphones.  Responsive Design is of the 3 Mobile Web Development strategies that is appropriated for semantic markup that use stylesheets and script to define appearance such as images, layout, etc. It is not appropriated for all websites, products or companies. MOBILE WEB APP or MOBILE-SPECIFC approach is the one which mobile-specific content is built and delivered to mobile devices (both tablets and/or smartphones). This approach is the third of the 3 mobile content approaches and usually involves some kind of server-side detection and redirection. Mobile-specifi...