You already have a website. So, now you may be thinking about getting a website for mobile phones. What should you consider? Below, you’ll find five of the approaches we at Kontrapunkt Online use in designing a mobile website.
1. We design for the small screen
With a variety of different phones we consider screen size, colour, contrast and layout in general and we always test the look on several phones. The amount of content that can be shown on a phone is less than a computer screen and therefore it’s important to understand and address a selection of content. Choices often need to be made in this phase and decisions must be taken on what is most important.
2. Navigation
When designing navigation for the mobile phone we try to simplify the options and (like when designing for PC web we consider the fold) on mobile we try to place the most important information on top of the screen for easy access.
3. Speed and Costs
Users expect the experience on mobile web to be just as easy and fast as on PC web and it is important to address this expectation by not designing mobile websites that are to heavy on graphic elements. Costs is another issue as many users still pay for traffic, this however varies a lot in the different countries it is something we consider when we know the specific target group.
4. Name of the site
All websites both on mobile and PC should have a strong name that’s easy to remember. We believe that having a ‘.mobi’ name makes it easier for users to remember the name of the mobile website.
5. We are designing for a phone
Therefore it makes sense to enable the phone’s core functionalities, like camera, use of phone numbers etc.