With all the iPhone (and now iPad) fever over the past few years we’re clearly seeing a structural shift from browsing the Web on computers to mobile devices, or more aptly “multimedia devices.” This trend is particularly apparent among 18-24 year olds. Though this is not news to anyone, it's amazing how many college and university Websites are extremely difficult to navigate, if not completely unusable on mobile devices.

Working with higher-ed clients, I have had many occasions to view and assess their Websites’ mobile performance, particularly on my BlackBerry Storm…yes, I know – a weak browser to begin with – but the experience was no better with WebKit-based browsers like on the Apple iPhone or on Google Android devices.

So, why is this important? According to Nielson Research, about 25% of US Internet users regularly access the Internet through mobile devices. Of course that number can vary widely by age demographic among other factors. We also recently conducted a Website visitor survey for one of our customers – a private liberal arts college – and 46% of their target Web audience (prospective students and their parents) indicated they regularly browse the Web via mobile devices. That’s a wake-up call folks.

I’m not suggesting that all of sudden prospective college students will be doing all of their research on their iPhones, Droids or Pres. But if a college or university can answer some of their most common questions – what majors do you offer, how much is tuition; or provide valuable services: a campus map (Google Maps integrated perhaps?) or ability to check admissions status,  via communication mediums that they use most – that's a powerful way to connect with those individuals. The key here is to leverage the mobile Web as yet another tool to drive admissions, yield, giving, alumni involvement and many other goals. We want to be able to connect with our audiences through the various communications mediums they use, and these days they’re increasingly mobile.

What’s holding back mobile site development?

  • Most Websites are optimized for viewing on screen sizes and resolutions common to desktop computers or laptops. As a result, they don’t scale well to the much smaller, much lower resolution screens found on most mobile devices.
  • JavaScript-based navigation and functionality – many Websites leverage it heavily, while many mobile browsers do not support JavaScript, have it disabled by default, or handle it inconsistently. The end result for mobile users is a poor user experience because of a difficult, if not impossible to navigate Website.
  • Flash – many college and university Websites make use of Adobe's Flash technology for content presentation, video and navigation. The problem is that mobile devices based on BlackBerry OS, Windows Mobile, Android and iPhone OS (all the major players in the mobile space) don't support Flash. While Flash support should arrive later this year for BlackBerry OS, Android and Windows Mobile 7, Steve Jobs has famously made it clear that Flash has no place on Apple's iPhone OS (variants of which power the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch).

Alternative approaches to mobile Web develop

The legacy approach to mobile Web has been to create a separate mobile-optimized Website, e.g. “m.yoursite.edu” vs. www.yoursite.edu. The idea was for users to either know the mobile URL and access it through their handheld or preferably for your Web server to “detect” when a user tried to access your main site through a mobile browser and automatically redirect them to the mobile-optimized URL. Some Websites still do this, but there are flaws with this approach:   

  • Often times two separate content management systems:- one for the main Website and one for the mobile version. This becomes a maintenance headache.
  • Either copying content or making sure it gets properly syndicated from the main site to the mobile site – again more work for content managers.
  • Typically with this approach only a subset of your main Website’s content and functionality is made available via the mobile-optimized site. How useful is that for your visitors?

An alternative approach, and one that I think is far better for your content authors and for site visitors, is a single site which presents content optimized for the device requesting it. In this case, your Web content management system or application server detects whether or not a site visitor is using a mobile browser and then formats the requested Web page accordingly – either optimized for the desktop or for the far smaller screen of a mobile device.

Mobile site development in the real world

To solve this problem, the approach we took with SiteExecutive, our Web content management system (Web CMS), is to provide content authors with the ability to build mobile-optimized Web page templates and then link them to standard desktop browser-optimized templates. So, when a visitor accesses a page on a SiteExecutive-powered Website, SiteExecutive first detects whether or not that visitor is using a mobile browser. If so, the page content is presented through the mobile-optimized “sibling” template the content author had previously associated with the standard desktop template. The end result is one Website, one set of URLs and all of your Website content accessible via mobile devices. No need to manage two systems or maintain content in two locations. This certainly does not solve the Flash issue, but there are other mobile-optimized means to present video and other content traditionally presented through Flash.   

For some examples of how this approach works in the real world, check out the following sites from your desktop and mobile device’s browser:

If you're interested in exploring your options for mobile site development, please give us a call: 1-877-797-2554 or get in touch by email.