Mobile websites
There are four different ways to adapt a website for mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. Probably the most widespread and popular solution is responsive design. In specific individual cases, however, adaptive design, a separate website or an app can also be advantageous.
Responsive web design
By formulating the website in HTML or CSS code, the screen size can automatically adapt to the end device. This solution is widely used due to its comparatively low cost. Google also recommends the solution thanks to the responsive design.
Implementation is very simple and the website operator does not have to worry about how the website appears on mobile devices.
Despite the simple implementation, errors can also occur in the display. This is particularly the case for websites with large, high-resolution images or particularly large blocks of text. Another problem is posed by old browsers, which cannot always implement the commands for the display.
Responsive design is best used when it comes to blogs or simple company presences.
Adaptive Design / Dynamic Serving
The more complicated version of responsive web design is called adaptive design, which saves two or more versions of the website on the server. When the server is called up, it recognizes which device is involved and which version of the website is loaded for it.
The advantage of adaptive web design is that only the website that can be processed on the corresponding end device is loaded. Complex websites are also easy to implement here.
As soon as a new (mobile) device appears on the market, the corresponding version of the website must be adapted to the new device. In addition, the identification of the appliance is quite error-prone.
Application = “App”
Depending on the company profile, an app can be a particularly elegant solution for the company. Once the app has been installed by a user, its behavior can be checked very precisely. The company receives further information about how the app is distributed, used and how many conversions are made via the app.
An app is difficult to compare with a responsive design solution. After all, such an application is something completely different from a website. The differences and advantages and disadvantages are therefore difficult to compare. If the selected website offers bookings, price comparisons or communication with other users, an app makes a lot of sense. However, the costs should not be neglected. If you want a high-quality app that is not just one of many, but should stand out, the prices are usually quite high. And just creating the app is not enough. After all, it has to be serviced time and again, for example when new functions can be added to the app.
Separate website
As soon as the desktop version and the mobile version of the website have different objectives, a separate website for mobile devices can be useful. These mobile websites can be recognized by the fact that they do not start with a “www”, but rather with an “m.” at the beginning or a “mobi” at the end. The canonical tag makes it possible to avoid duplicate content errors in the case of a separate website.
Separate websites are most suitable for particularly complex pages. These websites are also clearly marked in search engines. As a result, the websites are listed accordingly when searching via the mobile device.
The aforementioned canonical tag makes it possible to avoid the dangers of duplicate content. As soon as the content of the normal website and the mobile website differ, this can very quickly lead to confusion for the user. This problem arises when links are sent to a cell phone that are intended for a desktop version.
In this day and age of mobile devices, every website should soon also offer a mobile website. It is up to each website operator to decide which of the four options mentioned is used. In order to find the right solution, it is particularly important to choose it depending on the target group, the company and, of course, the content.