The Mobile Web is Here 

There is a huge opportunity for the companies who get mobile right to separate themselves from their competitors on the Web. According to Gartner Inc., by 2013 mobile phones will be the most common device used to access the Web. Mobile traffic increased thirty-two percent during 2010. Approximately eighty-nine million people in the United States have accessed the mobile Web in the past year and fifty-three percent of these people access the Internet from their phone daily.

At Ektron, we believe that “context” is the key to providing Web experiences that deliver results. In the case of mobile, the context is that visitors are accessing your website from a mobile device, usually with a task in mind. Mobile users don’t need – in most cases don’t want – their mobile device to present the same Web experience as a desktop browser. What they’re looking for is the content that brought them to a website, and they want that content presented in a mobile friendly context. If a visitor has come to a site through a search, he doesn’t want to click through multiple, slow-loading, hard-to-read pages designed for the desktop. If prospects have arrived on your landing page via an e-mail marketing campaign, you definitely want that page to display correctly on any device a prospect is using.

In order to deliver Web experiences that account for mobile context, site managers should follow the “One Web” principle. The “One Web” principle advocates that Web access from a mobile device should be as simple, easy and convenient as Web access from the desktop. But, “One Web” doesn’t mean that exactly the same content must always be available in exactly the same way from any given URL.

Often the question of building an “app” comes up when I discuss the mobile Web with customers. Ektron can support mobile application development when it makes sense. However, we believe that by following the One Web principle, you can deliver a mobile browser-based experience with much larger reach, more cost effectively than by building device-specific applications. Combined with the HTML5 standard, One Web mobile sites can even incorporate rich media elements without losing potential visitors or taking on the additional cost of building and maintaining mobile applications.

Ektron’s eMobile tools are a key component of the Ektron web content management platform. Because Ektron separates content from presentation, you can display content appropriate for any device without added development time or costs. With Ektron you can auto-detect both the device and browser being used; Target content using mobile device location capabilities; measure the effectiveness of mobile site content and optimize it with multivariate testing; you can even preview the look and function of your mobile site on the desktop using the Ektron Mobile Emulator.

Contact an Ektron representative today to get more details on how Ektron can help to cost-effectively build a mobile Web site without compromising the customer experience or the ability to manage a site’s content.

We also will be hosting a Webinar on how to build a mobile site with Ektron on September 23. For more information, please register for this webinar today.