Mobile Website

A mobile website is your ordinary website, built so it works properly on a phone. Same address, same pages, nothing to download. The text stays readable, the buttons are big enough for a thumb, and the menu folds into something you can tap. Most people now meet a business this way, standing in a queue or sitting in a car.

The real question owners ask is a different one. Do I need an app, or is a good mobile website enough? There is an honest test with four parts. Will people open it most days, not twice a year? Do you need to send a message that lands on their lock screen? Do you need the camera, the map or their location? Must it keep working with no signal at all? Two clear yes answers point to an app. Fewer than that, and a site is enough.

Here is the part that surprises people. An app has to be found, downloaded and then kept. Many owners pay for one and watch it sit unopened on the few phones that took it. A website asks for none of that. Someone taps a link in a message and is already reading. Apps also pass a review at Apple and Google before each update, and that can take days. A mobile website goes live the same hour you change it.

So make the site good first. Speed matters more than looks on a phone. Test it on a cheap handset over a weak connection, not on the newest model in the office. Check that a person can finish the main task with one thumb, whether that is booking, ordering or finding your number. When Linkysoft takes on a website design and build, the phone layout is drawn before the desktop one, because that is where the visitors are.

There is a middle road worth knowing. A progressive web app is a website that can be saved to the home screen and can send notifications, without a store. It covers many cases at a fraction of the price. When the four tests really do point to an app, Linkysoft builds it as a mobile app on top of the same system that runs the site, so nobody types the same order twice.