The mobile web is the fastest growing web capable platform, which does not seem to be slowing down for anyone or anything lately, and has no plans to stop its progress. After the launch of the mobile web in 2007, came the invention of the dedicated mobile sites. As the mobile web world keeps pushing further into the future, we may start to notice a down fall of dedicated mobile sites. When reviewing your mobile web presence, is your site a dedicated mobile site and do you plan to stay with that platform for the mobile web?
Dedicated mobile sites have been designed strictly for the mobile web, and no other web platform. These sites are a completely separate entity from their main desktop website, and do not provide as many features as their main desktop website counterpart. When the mobile boom hit, dedicated mobile sites offered companies and organizations a way to set up a site that was appropriate for the mobile web. These sites do not allow us to provide as much information as we are able to get on our main websites, and with mobile becoming the most used web capable platform our target audiences are now looking for the same exactly experience they get from viewing our sites on their desktop top computers, on mobile devices. As this problem continues to grow, many us may be wondering how we are going to fix this problem if we continue to keep using dedicated mobile sites.
The only solution to this problem is to get rid of our dedicated mobiles sites, and redesign our current desktop sites with responsive web design (RWD). RWD is the newest advance in web design that will take away all the frustration with all the other mobile platforms on the market. We will no longer need to maintain more than one site, because RWD will keep our same desktop sites and make them appropriate for mobile. Now many of may be wondering how RWD will be able to turn our desktop site into a mobile site without changing anything. Well the answer is simple; RWD is built on a flexible grid pattern that adjusts the design and content of the site, to be displayed appropriately on the screen size it is being viewed on. With RWD we will be able to keep our target audiences happy, by providing the same user interface, content and information from our desktop site on to our mobile sites, ensuring our target audiences have the same exact user experience on any devices, anywhere they go.
Dedicated mobile sites have been appropriate for mobile use over the past couple years, but as technology and the mobile world grow, as well as the amount of individuals using the mobile web, it is now time to switch to a platform that is more appropriate for not only today, but for years to come.