Does A Small Company Website Need A Mobile Version?

Does a small company website need a mobile version?

The interest in the mobile segment of the online audience is higher than ever: the number of users accessing sites from mobile devices is constantly growing, and search engines are actively calling for optimizing sites for a mobile audience. In this situation, the owners of large companies have long hastened to acquire mobile versions of their sites, but the situation is different with small businesses. Does a small company website need a mobile version?

Small companies, as a rule, create sites for businesses with a minimum of functions in order to ensure a presence on the Internet, on the one hand, and within the framework of a very modest budget, which can be allocated for development. As a result, the mobile version of the site is often considered an optional and, importantly, expensive addition.

At first glance, such an approach is quite logical: if the company’s website contains only text about its services or products, a couple of photos and contact details, then spending extra money on developing a mobile version would be too wasteful. But there is a flip side to the coin :

A site that is not prepared for working with mobile devices may look different on the screens of various gadgets as intended;
If the nested items of the multi-level menu of the site are opened only when you hover the mouse, then on mobile devices such a menu will not work;
If the site is made using Flash technologies, then it may not display correctly, or may not work at all, if we are talking, for example, about Apple mobile devices in which Flash is not supported.

Site for viewing on mobile devices.

As a result, optimizing the site for viewing on mobile devices is important, and it cannot be neglected, regardless of the size of the company and its financial capabilities. Therefore, even a small company needs to make sure that for mobile users the site remains as attractive, convenient and functional as for PC users.

Fortunately, this can be done in different ways, and if the company, for example, does not have the opportunity to develop and maintain a separate mobile version of the site, you can always resort to a special adaptive layout. In this case, the site is immediately created so as to automatically adapt to any users and represent the company in the best way.

The easiest way to make a site for a small company.

With responsive web design is to use a rubber layout and a special set of rules that determines the size and relative position of design elements on each page of the site. True, this approach will work only if the functionality of the site for PC users and users of mobile devices is the same.

Most often, a responsive web design uses Media Queries, but it is also possible to use Javascript, PHP. However, today you can find many special online tools that help webmasters to some extent automate the creation of adaptive web design, as well as test the results. For example, a fresh tool from Google called Resizer, an open-source project for automatically generating responsive images, Responsive Image Breakpoints Generator, etc., gained fame.