Are the iPhone and iPad killing the world wide web? And what does this mean for small business online strategies?
23rd August, 2010 by Alick
I read this interesting article by John Naughton yesterday in the Observer about the impact of handheld devices on Internet usage, versus the more traditional way of using the web via a browser.
It got me thinking about how that might impact what we do at miggle. Ever since we started development, in 2007, we’ve been ensuring sites we build for clients provide a presentable experience on mobile browsers. That’s a long way though from being able to claim we deliver usable mobile solutions. We don’t. Why? Because clients have not asked us to – and up to now we’ve not seen the value of pushing them as a ‘must have’ when we’ve been making that trade off between ‘must haves’ and ‘nice to haves’ as part of the work we do on defining what a client gets for their budget.
Were we to do this though, that would only scratch the surface. Building a site that renders well on a mobile web browser is one thing – but will that in itself work for users of handheld devices?
With the rise of the availability of, and usage of apps – each of which provides a tailored point of access to data on the Internet, we’re more likely to see the overall percentage of browser based web use of the Internet fall in share – even though figures for both web access and app access to the Internet are growing rapidly.
For clients then, this means, I think, that their mobile strategy needs to be one of distribution – and that this distribution is increasingly about exposure on social networks, which more and more are used by people on the move, with engagement in these networks being built by users declaring where they are and what they are doing. And this is usage which is driven by Apps.
In the face of that, a client’s website sure needs to look good in a mobile browser – but only because it’s an end point. The focus therefore needs to be on being found in the first place. As the web becomes more handheld, thus it will become more social, more app based – and in the medium term at least, available only, in large part, at the behest of the ultimate publisher – currently Apple. The importance of the app in this regard will only rise.
I’ll close on some stats. A year ago, a client of ours – who are definitely running a business on which their location is the key driver in anyone using their service – had handheld usage of their site account for 1.14%. A year on, it’s 4.98%. So, it’s more than quadrupled. By comparison, usage of that same client’s site by users of Microsoft IE6 is 7.24%. Which means mobile web usage in this instance, something everyone raves about. is just 68% of usage of a browser everyone is trying to quietly forget. (Which does make sense – IE6 is the past – but of course no designer should be taking a call on dismissing 7.24% of a businesses addressable audience….)
What I don’t know is what level of engagement users are having with that business through Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare for example. If I did – that 4.98% would be higher for sure because it’d be clearer on how to drive it. That’s not a level of ignorance I, or my clients, can afford to have for long and the way in which it develops will have a fundamental effect on how miggle moves forward as a business.
Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

