3 effective strategies to ensure your website works on every device

April 24, 2013

The recent explosion of tablets and smartphones in the consumer market is presenting a number of opportunities, and challenges, for businesses in every industry. As a business, the biggest challenge you will likely face in this regard is optimizing your website experience for the different screen sizes and technologies supported by these devices. Here are 3 important strategies to keep in mind in ensure you’re not losing clients.

  1. Not All Devices Are Created Equal

    In this wild west of beautiful flat glass and simplistic user interfaces, it’s important to understand that, unlike PC’s, the tablet market is still very new and there are very few standards. Therefore your website, or parts of your website, may work with one device or tablet and not another. For instance, many websites using rich-media components such as video, audio and motion built in Adobe’s popular Flash language won’t work correctly on an Apple iPad but work fine on RIM’s Playbook or Google’s Android. On the other hand, those same elements built for the iPad using HTML5 often won’t work on the majority of desktop or laptop browsers. There simply is no universal language that just works, and there is no “one-size fits all” solution.

  2. Adapt to, and Respect the User

    Embrace the fact that your clients are using these devices and they expect you to cater to their choice of technology. If your website does not take them into consideration, they will not be blaming their device – they will be faulting you for not adapting to them. This means more than simply having a website that serves the lowest common denominator that “just works” – it also needs to leverage the unique features and adapt to the limitations, of every device so that it represents the best experience possible, which brings us to…

  3. Don’t Sacrifice – Respect Your Brand

    Most business owners say “let’s build one website that works everywhere”. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. Limiting some of the great things you can do on a PC just to make your website work on a smartphone or tablet defeats the purpose and vice versa. Flash’s ActionScript3 language is still the only way to create compelling immersive fullscreen experiences on the desktop across all browsers, while HTML5 offers some advantages for tablets. What’s more, each type of device offers its own unique viewing experience and a design that works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another. Phones have considerably smaller screens, and even the larger tablets often suffer from poor network speeds due to mobile network limitations or low-powered Wi-Fi hardware. Big images and streaming video that are so effective on desktop websites are often a detriment on mobile devices. Each device deserves and requires an experience customized to it, with its own benefits and limitations harnessed so that instead of sacrificing for any particular device, you’re using them to their full advantage.

Websites should not, and do not need to, be built with a “one-size fits all” mentality. Modern development allows for a more intelligent solution. It’s called Device Responsive Design. Gone are the days of “Our website is best viewed with…”. With this technology, the website is built with a common framework for the design and information, and then it detects what device is being used and what it’s capable of, and then delivers the best user experience for that screen and device. It’s an important piece of your overall digital marketing strategy to ensure that none of your clients feel left behind and you are maximizing every opportunity to attract, retain and develop new clients going forward.

To learn more about how your business can harness the tablet and smartphone evolution, and how you can leverage these technologies with your current website, please feel free to get in touch with me via e-mail, phone 416.987.4935 x3000 or @curtispriest

Curtis


Curtis Priest
Partner / President & CEO
Pixelcarve Inc.

416.987.4935 x3000
http://www.pixelcarve.com
https://pixelcarve.com/
304 – 96 Spadina Ave., Toronto, ON