Do I need to create a mobile version of the website?

[mguise]

Hi Community

I've been building a few websites here and their as a part time freelancer. I am starting to do this more and more as a full time job.

I have a very novice question and please forgive if i am posting this in the wrong area.

1. Do I need to design a mobile version of the website I create? or I should say mobile versions of the site.

2. Should this be handled as standard practice or do I need to charge my clients more? I mean should I handle it as an option and openly acknowledge that I have to design for mobile phones?

I test for IPhone, IPad and Android but that can hardly be categorized as designing a site for a mobile phone since these phones have the ability to display websites almost the same way as a regular site.

Which actually leads me to a third question.

3. Should I design a separate web site for an IPhone, IPad or Android.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

 

[DHDdirect]

Well it all depends on the target audience that your client wants to attract.

Creating mobile websites obviously take extra time to create. Depending on how you go about creating the mobile site depends on how much time it'll take. And also depending on how many versions you want to design for, ie general mobile, ipad, etc, will also add time to the mix.

If you are creating websites that are css based then it is easier to create a mobile version of your website just by creating a seperate stylesheet hence the quickest and easiest method.

As far as including it in your website design packages or just asking the customer what they may be interested in depends on your personal preferrences, how much time it takes you to create these extras, and a marketing stand point.

As far as designing a mobile website goes, I'd suggest looking into tera-WURFL. With the use of WURFL you can determine just about anything about the users mobile device and either redirect them to different sites or code your site to use different stylesheets.

Another good tool is the Opera Mini Simulator for testing your mobile sites.

I hope that helps.

 

[Brian Angel]

Mobile sites will become more and more predominate in the future so yes, it is a service you should offer. And YES, charge more, it’s more work and basically there getting 2 web sites (of course I wouldn’t charge that way, but it's a nice selling point). CSS does have the ability to let you create a separate style sheet for handheld and that’s one way, but also look into JQtouch, I haven’t had the time to mess around with it too much but it looks to be another good solution for iPhone and Android.

 

[mguise]

Thanks for responding.

I am thinking about offering this as an extra option to clients and bill them accordingly. At this point I'm just not sure how to approach this.

I might advise them that although I will adhere as strictly as possible to web standards, which should be good for smart phones, there are a number of hand held users they will be unable to reach. At this point I will give them estimates as to how much I would charge for building a site depending on the number of cell phones they would like to target.

What do you think? I see I have allot of research to do because I have no idea how to charge for mobile devices as I have limited experience in this area.

Again, thanks for your feedback.