Websites for Mobile, Optimize!
What's your mobile strategy? The recommended best practice for making a website mobile friendly is up for debate, depending who you are or who you ask.
The good thing is you have options.
- Optimize the appearance of your current site content to be mobile friendly (i.e. viewable on a reduced scale)
- Create a mobile-optimized site with different content using a framework that detects whether the user is visiting from mobile device.
Both options have pros and cons. Option 1 allows you to have one site that is accessible to all users regardless of device. Option 2 allows you to target your content to your audience. You have to decide what will work best for your budget and your message.
Oak Grove faced this challenge recently when tasked with conversion of a traditional site to mobile. ASVABprogram.com is a career exploration site geared toward high school counselors, students and their parents. We asked ourselves two questions: why are people coming to the site? And what are they most likely to do once they get there?
We chose option 2 and focused our mobile design on the answers. We knew we needed to present easier navigation and improve the user experience for the younger, tech-savvy, mobile audience. The student audience unanimously voted the career videos as their #1 activity on the site. We also wanted to make it easy for counselors to sign up for the program and have access to resources.
Think about why your audience visits your site. What are their expectations? If your audience is using their mobile device to visit your site they want to get to what they’re looking for quickly. Make it easy!
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