Web design & development has obviously evolved over the past few years.  Design has ranged everywhere from flat simple graphics to bubbly, shiny buttons.  Development has moved from loading new pages to javascript/ajax driven pages, increasing the ease of use.  But now it appears we have to take step back when it comes to our mobile phones.  If your company hasn’t at least thought about doing some sort of development on a phone, then you are probably still stuck in the past a bit.  Welcome to the future.  Although we are surrounded by tons of different mobile phones, from the tasty iPhone to the open source G1, how does design and development meet the needs of so many phones?

First of all, lets ask this question.  Why should I invest in developing a mobile website or app?  Because that is where everything is moving.  Although using a computer will never become obsolete, how much more power to you have over your consumer/ business partner if you can communicate with them immediately?

“I have an iPhone and my website somewhat loads on it.  Web development for phones is a waste of money.”  Although the iPhone has an incredible browser and is the usage population is growing like a mad dog, it’s still only a small percent of the population.  Have you tested your website on other phones?  Not everyone can afford an iPhone.  Many people are on very basic phones that don’t even load websites at all.  Have you thought about marketing to that massive part of the population with other phones?

Our approach to developing for mobile phones.  We’ve got the process pretty simple.  For basic development, we develop a regular website.  Then we develop a “smart phone” friendly site.  When I say “smart phone,” I mean iPhone, Blackberry Bold, Storm etc.  Pretty much any phone that can access the internet and view webpages and other nifty stuff is considered a smart phone.  Back on topic, we finally develop an even simpler site that is essentially text based.  This generally covers all the bases with mobile phones.  However, for best results and if it is covered by the budget, we’ll usually develop more levels based on different phones.  Phone dimensions vary heavily so developing more versions for each phone leads to better experience for the viewer.

Since mobile phone design & development is up in the air, all of this information could be considered obsolete next week Just kidding…but seriously…

Thanks for reading
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