For anyone who owns a smartphone, (or cell phone)it goes with them everywhere. They are always with you, and they’re connected to the world wide web. Every year, the screen on these smart phone get bigger, and bigger. This year, Apple decided to give it a go with their iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. With these mobile devices, you can create a smartphone application, engage mobile customers through social networks and advertise using the text message feature. As shown in the graph above, smartphones are growing in millions, every year.
“Online ad sales are growing, but virtual goods, premium content and other models are big business, especially for the mobile web.” http://mashable.com/2010/04/13/mobile-web-stats/
The statistics in 2011, nearly 5 percent of all internet traffic from global markets, including those of other countries, came from non-computer devices. Smartphones are responsible for two-thirds of that traffic but, the remainder is attributed to tablets. Can having a tablet benefit your small business? Most certainly; You can present materials on the go. You can conduct training, finalize sales, even issue estimates and invoices. A tablet is a perfect business partner, from meetings to home and everywhere in between.
Mobile websites do not need to be resized or cut down in size and information any longer. Now a days, most modern mobile devices have the capability to fully show websites that can be easily zoomed in and out of for easier viewing on smaller screens. The mobile and tablet market has resulted in a ‘responsive’ website design technology where websites resize automatically to fit the layout to accommodate the said device. These responsive websites can save you from having to rewrite the content of your page to try and fit all of your business information onto one page. Instead, it is displayed to every user in a way that is comfortable to read. Responsive layouts have also proved to generate increased leads and sales for businesses as a result of the better user experience.
To be completely frank, it never accord to me that people with disabilities such as blindness, used smart phones or tablets. Perhaps it is ignorance. None the less, technology in the 21st century has come very far. The Web Accessibility Initiative, or WAI is according to wikipedia, ”an effort to improve the accessibility of the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) for people with disabilities.” “Many of the accessibility solutions described in this Note contribute to "universal design" or "design for all" by benefiting non-disabled users. For example, support for speech output not only benefits blind users, but also Web users whose eyes are busy with other tasks; while captions of audio not only benefit deaf users but also increase the efficiency of indexing and searching audio content on Web sites.”(http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/WAI-access-profiles)
Building a responsive design is most important and should be at the top of the list. Having this design will allow everyone that owns a mobile device, with disabilities or not, access to your website and contents. Building a separate website solely for mobile devices is also advised, this way you can tailor the content which you want the user to see when using said device. Using a mobile-optimized theme comes hand in hand with this. In conclusion, with the rise of usability of tablets and mobile devices, adding a tablet to your business and making your website accessible across the board, it is proven to increase productivity and profitability.