With all the discussion lately about mobile access, you might find this explanation of the difference between a smartphone and iPad site. Both tablets and smartphones are mobile devices and can display a web site on the Internet, which is where the confusion often begins.
Basically, smartphones are one kind of hardware and tablets are another. With smaller screens and memory, smartphone sites should be light on graphics with pages that are sized to eliminate sizing and as much scrolling as possible. When we design a smartphone site, the pages are sized so they display best on a smart phone screen.
In the case of an iPad, the larger and more graphical format allows us to design more visually appealing sites which are comparable to standard web sites. However, in being designed specifically for iPads, the formatting is perfect for presentation on that hardware. So, yes, these are two different kinds of sites and if you want all bases covered, you need a standard desktop site, a smartphone site and an iPad site.
With smart phones, the info on the site is translated to templates designed for the hardware being used. So, a smart phone site on your server will have templates for iPhone, Blackberry and Android. Each will present a little differently but the design and use on smartphones are the same. An issue occurs when you have a smartphone site without an iPad site. Calling up such a web site on iPad will display the iPhone site by default. This is why it is important to watch your iPad traffic and add an iPad site to the mix when you begin to get a lot of mobile traffic on iPads. All of these stats are available on Google Analytics and, yes, you should be watching them on a regular basis.
If you are ready to expand or begin a smartphone or iPad site as part of your Internet strategy, please contact me for more information at donald@dogstarmedia.com.
