What Is a Mobile Website?

Mobile website design is one that has been optimized for viewing on a mobile device such as a iPhone, smartphone or tablet.
Mobile websites different from desktop sites in several ways. Sites that are mobile-friendly offer a better user experience when viewing on a smartphone, which leads to longer engagement times and better customer satisfaction.

Mobile Websites vs. Desktop Websites

Most websites are designed to be viewed on a desktop or laptop. The fonts, layouts and image dimensions are geared to the sizes of conventional monitors.

It’s decidedly user-unfriendly in a mobile context. The font is too tiny and most of the time you can’t even tell what the site is about. If you feel motivated enough to want to read the text, you have to pinch and zoom to enlarge the font. But when you enlarge it to a size that doesn’t give you eyestrain, most of the text goes off the screen, as shown below:

So you swipe it horizontally and vertically until, bit by bit, you’ve read everything on the page.
If you tap a link and land on a new page, you have to do this all over again.
It’s no wonder most users bail out when they see a site like this on their mobile phones.

How a Mobile Website Is Different

Mobile Website Design is user-friendly, invites perusal and interaction. It essentially zooms to you and adapts to the phone instead of you having to pinch and zoom in yourself.. It provides the key information that someone on the go might need. Its navigation is clear and easy to use. Text can be read comfortably, and its links and icons are better suited to tapping than clicking.

Why You Need a Mobile Friendly Website

By the second quarter of 2012, about 55% of mobile phone users in the United States had smartphones. Google and Ipsos estimate that 94% of smartphone users look up local information on their phones, and 90% have taken action as a result. By the end of 2012, there will be 116 million smartphone users in the United States.
The numbers are big and the trend is upward. By 2013, more consumers will be looking up websites on smartphones than on computers. Sooner or later, your customer or prospect will want to interact with your site on a smartphone. If the site doesn’t meet their needs, they’ll go elsewhere.