Take a cue from these slides that have given me more knowledge on the best methods to design websites on a mobile. Never assume websites online can be replicated on mobile. With lack of good bandwidth on GPRS, wapsite designers not only need to ensure all your information and ‘call-to-action’ items (ie. downloading a content) need to be accessed fast within a few clicks, you also need to ensure only relevant information are presented on the front page and top of the wapsite. Remember, mobile users are not as patient and unlike website, you only have less than a few seconds to make an impression. And you thought website was bad. However, the good news is, almost everyone is seeing the importance of putiing the web on wap too.

Unlike the web where you only have 3 sizes of Internet browsers (and even then you can create a website for the resolution of the width of 768 only), there are so many handset models in the market using different browser types and sizes from Symbian to Java and even BREW in the US. The sizes range from 96 X 68 to 240 X 320 on newer models like Nokia N95. So, how does one design a standard wapsite for all handset models. You can’t and that is why transcoding is required for wapsites and contents delivered to the different handset models. Read more about how Novarra, a Mobile Internet company answers questions in relations to Mobile Web.

Also, a few sites like http://ready.mobi have been developed to evaluate mobile wapsites on how user friendly the site is and whether the site has a mobile (.mobi) version. It is suprising to note that a lot of popular websites like CNN and MSNBC do not have have a .mobi version yet.

Further references here: Oon Yeoh talks about the shape of mobile web to come.

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A down-to-earth commentary on mobile technology, internet and telecommunications from an employee working in a network operator in Asia. Feedback and proposals most welcomed.

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