The advent of the smartphone and other mobile devices is changing the face of the Internet. More people now access the Internet from mobile devices than laptops and desktop computers. It is the direction of the future, for better or for worse. But don't focus exclusively on mobile users just yet - there are still millions of us using more conventional devices.
The typical user of a mobile device is younger and more mobile than those of us old enough to remember life before Apple allowed Microsoft to use mouse technology. They may also spend less time on any given page, partly because of the battery life of a device that is not plugged in, partly because of where they might be and what else they might be doing at the time, and partly because of the data usage charges sometimes associated with smartphones.
The marketing you do needs to accommodate all of that. Bear in mind that ads which look good on a laptop screen may require scrolling on a tablet or smartphone, so you need to keep your promo pages short and snappy.
The best way to cover both markets is to design your web page so it automatically resizes to fit whatever device it is being viewed on, and delivers information in smaller chunks. The Pricebender Auctions home page is a great example.
Automatic resizing requires a little bit of extra code in the header. The following works well for me.
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">
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The advent of the smartphone and other mobile devices is changing the face of the Internet. More people now access the Internet from mobile devices than laptops and desktop computers. It is the direction of the future, for better or for worse. But don't focus exclusively on mobile users just yet - there are still millions of us using more conventional devices.
The typical user of a mobile device is younger and more mobile than those of us old enough to remember life before Apple allowed
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