MAN USES PHONE TO LOOK AT WEBSITE!

Call me lazy, but if I’m not in front of it already, I’ll rarely switch on my desktop PC or laptop just to go online. That’s so twentieth century. Like everyone else in the world these days, I’ll whip out my smartphone or, my new iPad mini* and get on with it. And God help any website that doesn’t allow me to find or do what I want with it on my mobile device – quickly and easily – because if it doesn’t, I’ll find another website that can. Because the alternative is getting up from a comfy sofa, switching on my PC or laptop and finding something else to do for half an hour while it boots up, installs updates and restarts. And that’s not gonna happen.

I’m not alone here, am I?

You can’t move for smartphones and tablets these days, and mobile browsing is now beginning to overtake desktop browsing. However, relatively few websites are addressing this fact and reaping the benefits of the corresponding opportunities.

Offering a mobile-optimised online experience is about more than demonstrating your brand is à la mode (which is French for “chic”); it’s about embracing the commercial benefits of giving your customers what they want, when they want it, how they want it.

So how do you do that exactly? Well, apps may seem like the obvious choice (and in some cases, they can be the best choice) but don’t overlook the importance of a good old-fashioned mobile-optimised website.

Without boring you (or myself) with too much detail, websites are most commonly optimised for mobile browsing in one of two ways: by either building it with jQuery Mobile, or alternatively responsive page layouts.

Responsive layouts used on fifthdimension.com adjust & rearrange the content according to your browser

So what’s the difference? And why should you care?

jQuery Mobile sites tend to look like apps, offering a similarly streamlined user experience with familiar navigation, buttons and controls. This, however, often requires you to create two versions of each web page, with the browser rendering the version relevant to the viewing device (unless, of course, you’re using a smarter solution such as EPiServer CMS, which takes your standard page content and renders it as jQuery Mobile). If you have to create two versions of each page, you don’t need your CFO to tell you it’s going to cost more.

The alternative to jQuery Mobile is responsive layouts, which simply adapt to the size of the browser window (irrespective of whether you’re viewing the site on a mobile, a tablet, a laptop or – if you live in Tokyo, your fridge door) and rearrange, reposition and (when appropriate) remove content to fit the space available. The benefit of responsive layouts is that you only require a single version of each page, and if considered at the outset, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to incorporate mobile optimisation during development, at little or no additional cost.

So what’s our recommendation? Well, while we prefer jQuery Mobile for the user experience, responsive layout provides excellent results for the majority of websites, but it really all boils down to your budget, and the skills and technology available to your digital agency.

At Fifth Dimension, we build many of our sites using the Umbraco CMS platform, and developing mobile-optimised responsive layouts from scratch is our default approach. If your digital agency isn’t offering you an integrated mobile option as standard – or they are, but they’re charging through the nose for the privilege – then maybe you should be talking to a different agency. May i recommend getting in touch with Fifth Dimension?

*other tablet devices also available

Really?

At MasterCard's European Prepaid 2012 conference this week, I was fortunate to hear Chris Sanderson of Future Labs speak on a world without cash - including this great ad ....i've forgotten how great it is, and felt it was worth sharing, even if you've seen it before...