What is mobile-friendly?
A mobile browser, also called a microbrowser, minibrowser or wireless internet browser (WIB), is a web browser designed for use on a mobile device such as a mobile phone or PDA. Mobile browsers are optimized so as to display Web content most effectively for small screens on portable devices.
Mobile usage is growing fast, as new mobiles phones are getting released, like smarthphones and the new touchphones. Thus making web pages to be more mobile-friendly has become a must - a plus to offer visitors the experience to discover the content on-the-go with their mobile phones. The mobile web has being increasing rapidly over the past years.
The 3G mobile broadband incresead during the year of 2007, with an increase of 25% over the year in average monthly data transfer. In an online panel, provided by Research Now, aproximately 90% of the 2000 respondents are interested in learning about mobile web, demonstrating a need for brands to make their mobile properties findable via mobile search.
Issues on mobile-friendly
Poor website display and layout issues non-optimized for mobile phones are the top reasons for mobile web dissatisfaction among consumers.
Non-optimizing for mobile phones means no load speed optimization: loading unecessary elements and images on mobile phones equals to more loading time and traffic on phone bill.
Various studies on mobile-friendly
How People Use Web on Mobiles (PDF document) (Yanqing Cui, Virpi Roto from Nokia, Research Center)
Mobile Internet Usage (Consumer study of mobile Internet usage and attitudes)
ComScore. 2007. Mobile Phone Web Users Nearly Equal PC Based Internet Users in Japan