PDA, Pocket PC and Smartphone - do your web pages shape up?

A growing number of people are using a PDA, Pocket PC or Smartphone to access the web. But does your web site look appealing to those using mobile computing? Steve Nichols of InfoTech Communications takes a closer look.

How many companies are inadvertently failing to optimise their web sites for a number of their visitors? That is, those using PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) or smart phones.

The market for PDAs and smart phones is now huge, but a lot of corporate web sites are not designed to be viewed on the tiny screens that these devices have.

The total number of Symbian-equipped smartphones in use is estimated to be around to 19.2 million worldwide with more than with 8.7 million sold so far this year (Source: Silicon.com).

Worldwide sales of PDAs are predicted to reach 35 million units this year (Source: Infotech Trends), although sales may fall off slightly as buyers choose an all-in-one smartphone device rather than a PDA.

Whether people choose a PDA or smartphone the message is clear - more and more of them are going to be accessing information while on the move. But are you delivering what they want?

The problem is simple. Most desktop PCs and laptops come with a 1024 x 768 pixel display. A proportion may be using a screen smaller (800 x 600 pixels) or larger (perhaps up to 1600 x1200).

Most internet sites are designed to accommodate as many users as possible, either by being built to 800x600 pixels (which everyone can read without scrolling) or 1024 x 768 (which accommodates more than 80% of surfers, but can frustrate the remaining 12-16% of 800 x 600 users who have to scroll sideways to view all the screen).

Alternative

The alternative is to make your site fills the entire screen, whatever the size, by setting the site width to 100%. This would seem like an ideal solution, but causes problems as your marvellous layout will look completely different on every platform. In fact, on larger monitors your site can look like a dog's dinner!

Now consider a PDA. An average Windows Pocket PC-based PDA, like an HP iPAQ, has a screen diagonal that is only 3.5 inches (9 cm), The screen can usually display about 320 x 240 pixels. Blackberrys currently have more landscape-shaped screens of about 240 x 160 or square-shaped 260 x 240 depending on the model.

Either way, it doesn't really matter - people visiting your web site with one of these devices are probably not going to enjoy the experience!

Luckily more and more organisations are waking up to the fact that there are PDAs in use out there and are providing redesigned content for these platforms.

The BBC, for example, provides a cut-down site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/pda/. This uses a news feed with minimal graphics. The site is designed with a 100% width setting to suit all manner of portable devices. It is simple and effective, but more importantly readable.

Importance

Other companies are beginning to latch on to the importance of looking after PDA users too.

Aviva, the parent company of Norwich Union and, more recently the RAC, recently launched a PDA version of its news service for investors. Designed for a minimal screen width it automatically mirrors the content on the main Aviva web site, including press releases, upcoming events, announcements and the latest Aviva share price.

Not to be left behind, CiB's own web site now has a PDA-friendly section. I have coded it so that the site takes the main CiB news, job advertisements and course information and automatically publishes the content at www.cib.uk.com/pda in a format suitable for mobile devices. If users click on a link they are taken to the printer-friendly version of the story with minimal graphics.

If you are using a content management system it may not be too hard to make a PDA-friendly version of your site. The trick is to make the system publish the material twice - once to the main site and then again to the PDA page with either smaller images or no images at all.

There are some pitfalls. PDAs can use different types of browser software so try to avoid using Javascript or Dynamic HTML that may not display properly. For example, the menu structure on cib.uk.com uses DHTML and doesn't work on my HP iPAQ. I am not suggesting you get rid of all your whizz-bang features on your main site for the sake of a few PDA users, but you can offer non-DHTML alternatives like a site map.

Writing Skills

The next step involves your writing for the web skills. Make sure that you write meaningful headlines and even more meaningful sub-headings or summaries. The two should work together. That is, the summary should work with the headline to tell you more about the story and not just repeat it. The summary should give people enough information that they don't need to click on the story to find out what on earth it is about.

This minimises clicking, which is just a PDA user wants.

To be honest, whether you are writing for PDA or a main web site the writing technique should be the same.

Is it worth producing a PDA-friendly web site? Only your metrics will tell you. In Aviva's case it was felt that a large number of financial analysts were web-savvy and early adopters of PDA technology. Once the initial web design work had been done it becomes a seamless job to publish to both platforms, so the run-on cost is negligible.

One piece of advice though - if you do create a PDA-specific version of your web site make sure you tell people about it. If you don't no-one will ever know you made the effort.