The developments of the mobile web are akin to those of the Desktop Web back in 1998 according to research conducted by Jakob Nielson in his alert box web page at www.useit.com.

Testing mobile websites through various means he found that they failed on most of the tests he worked on. For starters the sites tested were found to have very large pages with large images or long pages that were impossible to see clearly on the smaller screens of mobiles. 

There were problems with scrolling down the sites meaning that users would often miss what they were targeting due to the small screen and even smaller peephole.

Even getting to the sites was a problem as the download times were so slow which almost encourages the user to give up very easily.

Pointing out several other factors that aren’t up to scratch he senses a real reluctance for people to use the mobile web and at this time forecasts a dark future for m-commerce.

It seems obvious that anybody wishing to improve their online profit margins and still has some spare cash that getting their website mobile compliant should be an imperative. For those wishing to corner the mobile market place then Nielson recommends getting a separate site made up and two different ones if possible for the different specifications of the different phones on the market. The smaller the screen it’s aimed at the less features it requires.

A lot of how you view these results will depend on where you want your site to go and the audience you are looking to attract. It does seem though that there are many opportunities out there for any companies that get mobile internet marketing right though.

Posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 2:30 pm in Mobile Marketing, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.