Mobile Sites Still Necessary ???
 

Bought my wife the new Blackberry Torch today and was messing around with the browser... and I have to say my site displayed perfectly, including all the little javascript tricks. I know iphones already have great browsers, but didn't expect the default Blackberry browser to work so well.

Even on my older Bold with opera mini the site displays right. Just thinking over the next 1-2 years with more and more people getting iphones and other smartphones for browsing, why even mess with mobile sites?

Wouldn't it now also make sense for maybe just sponsors to determine incoming traffic and give simple mobile purchasing options at the general sign up page?

Just doesn't seem like it makes sense to do double work for sites and fhgs when phones are evolving so quick... :upsidedow

A site optimized for the mobile experience will always be better than browsing the site on a phone, the way it was meant to be seen on a computer monitor.

:2 cents:

Was the site you were looking at the one in your sig, Barelist.com?

thats his site yes.

I do think a mobile version is much better though :thumbsup

A lot of sites still display properly in a mobile window, but that doesn't mean they're easy to navigate, or convert to a membership for that matter.

Yeah checked out a bunch of others as well... look fine...

Flash still doesn't work... but I've always stayed away from it :)

You have, but the sites you promote - do they use flash?

The text and links are very small making it hard to navigate, also the pics are small. The sites that are promoted from the links, like the Holly Randall, take a very long time to load.

So if you have the average mobile traffic as others, 3-5%, you will lose out on some good traffic. People on phones just don't buy PC sites, they want the mobile compatible version.

.05% of our PC members use their phone to surfer the PC site. It's not that much. And as the mobile market grows and people move away from the PC, you don't want to be scrambling then due to worse conversion ratios because people on phones can't navigate the promoted site.

True. Also guessing big fat button links help with fat fingered touch screen users :thumbsup

Just interesting to see how far phone browsers have come :)

LOL, "your fingers are too fat, to obtain a special dialing wand ..."

One of my favorite Simpsons episodes.

your mode of thinking is the same as mine has been. the lines between mobile/non-mobile have been blurring since the iphone came out. but screen size will always probably warrant some kind of "mobile" option, even if it does become less of a niche

I use a 30" and 24" monitor all day, so even designing for < 1200px width is tough... I do think great site design will soon just need one site that works both well on a desktop and phone... I understand the reasoning for having both right now, but even phone resolutions are getting nuts, so we'll see... Having a 15" laptop with 1920x1200 resolution a few years ago seemed crazy to me, but I got used to it. The next two laptops I bought were both 1920x1080 and seemed just fine... same thing will happen with phones I'm sure :)

Just another quick comment.

Your site is loaded with links that say "click here..."

You don't "click" on a phone, you "tap" or "touch" :winkwink:

Hey my Bold still "clicks" :1orglaugh

We have simple text listing that is whitelabel'able.

www.imoviepass.com - this is something that would probably perform better (layout wise) for your mobile surfers.

I couldn't agree more... you will always need to design for the view area and when you're talking about such a drastic difference a separate design will always win out... IMO

site design that works well on both is out there already. :winkwink:

Expected design then :thumbsup