This week, two new iPad sites were launched here at Dog Star Media. One was for cosmetic surgeon Robert Rho, MD in NYC. If you look on your iPad, you can see his iPad site at labiadoctor.com. The other was for cosmetic dentist Amy Norman, DDS. Using an iPad, you can see her iPad site at dreamsmile.com.
iPad user stats are skyrocketing. In the last six months, we have seen iPad visitors jump on most of our clients’ Google Analytics stats to the #2 most used mobile device to view their web sites. Before the launch of the iPad2, iPads were usually well behind Androids and Blackberries and far behind iPhones, which consistently are the #1 mobile device used to view our clients’ web sites.
But, iPad2 changed everything. And, now that so many mobile visitors are coming to our clients’ sites, we are seeing a lot of interest in iPad-specific sites. Generally, a mobile site will play on an iPad, but it will look small, like it would on a smart phone. iPad sites are designed specifically for display on an iPad, so they are large and graphical while smartphone mobile sites are mostly text and not very graphic.
If you are going to keep up and meeting your viewers’ needs you need to know the difference between the kinds of sites and how they work on mobile devices. Most of our clients are now seeing between 10-20% of their web traffic coming in via mobile devices. This is getting significant and with the explosion of mobile users and the improvement in wireless networks, more and more Internet use will be mobile. So, you have to look right despite the kinds of hardware people are using to view your site.
Standard Web Sites:
Meant to be viewed on computers or laptops. The classic blend between graphics and written content. For cosmetic dentists and cosmetic surgeons, Flash is expected to establish a higher level of aesthetic. Also, in the Flash, many will embed video which plays in the Flash element of the site.
Smart Phone Mobile Sites:
Do not play Flash so you have a problem right there. These devices have web browsers, so it is possible to see most or all of a standard web site, but you have to work at it. Resizing, changing orientation and lots of scrolling occur when you try to view a standard site on a smart phone. This is why so many doctors have moved to having mobile sites designed for smartphones. Users on smart phones are automatically shown the mobile site for their kind of phone and those sites are designed to fit and be used best on smart phones. If you have video you want to show, we reformat the video as Quicktime and it plays just fine on the smart phone site. At this point, smartphone mobile sites are no longer an add-on. It is a necessity if you want to show yourself off properly to every web visitor.
iPad Mobile Sites:
The iPhone smart phone template shows on the iPad as a default, but it does not fit nearly as well as a mobile site designed for an iPad. iPad mobile sites take advantage of the great graphics presentation of the iPad. Flash still does not play on an iPad, but these sites are much more like traditional sites, only formatted well for the iPad. This is the fastest growing segment of mobile device use among our client base and it is accounting for a lot of the increases in mobile use overall.
Are you ready to join the market out here with a mobile site? The numbers are reaching a point where you have an outdated presentation online if you are not accounting for the growing segment that are using new devices to see your online presence. If you do not have a mobile site or an iPad site, now is the time. If you would like information on adding a smart phone web site and a mobile web, please contact me today at donald@dogstarmedia.com.
