What Type of Mobile Website Do You Need?

According to Newegg.com, more than 85% of American consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 own a smartphone. This percentage slightly drops to 61% among consumers who are 51-64 years old. Finally, 46% of consumers who are older than 65 own a smartphone.

This means that a large percentage of your website visitors come from mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. It also means that it is very important to have a mobile or mobile friendly website to accommodate mobile users’ needs. Your options are a dedicated mobile website, hybrid or adaptive website, or a responsive website.

Below are short descriptions of the three mobile website options:

• Dedicated mobile website:
  • Separate from the traditional, desktop website
  • Specifically and separately designed for mobile devices
  • Can have a different look/design from the desktop website
  • Pulls information from a separate database
  • Great for offering different content and special offers to mobile device shoppers
  • Requires more time and effort for updating more than one database

• Hybrid or adaptive website:
  • Pulls information from the same database as the traditional, desktop website
  • Configured to present the same data in both mobile device and traditional desktop formats
  • Does not allow the flexibility to show different content to mobile and desktop users
  • Requires some design intervention to make sure that the website content is displayed appropriately in both formats

• Responsive website:
  • information from the same database as the traditional, desktop website
  • Detects the device the visitor is using and automatically presents the website in the format best suited for that particular device
  • Downloads the most data and loads slowly, especially on smartphones with slower internet connections
  • Does not allow the flexibility to show different content to mobile and desktop users

Your mobile website decision should be based on the degree of flexibility and differentiation you want to have between your mobile and traditional website, the skill level of your development team, budget, and amount of time available for website maintenance. In some cases, website owners choose to only have a mobile website because the majority of their traffic comes from mobile devices. In most cases, businesses have a traditional website and some form of a mobile website. This trend will continue to evolve as consumer habits change with time and new innovations.