10 important guidelines for mobile Web Development

The rapid development of mobile devices has brought great convenience to users. Users can easily access the Internet using Android, iPhone and other mobile devices. A recent study shows that more than 63 million of users use mobile devices to access different mobile websites, which is expected to reach about 0.2 billion by the end of next year. As the number of users continues to grow, product managers and designers should track mobile websites accessed by mobile users in a timely manner to learn the latest developments in Mobile website development. But in the end, how should we track it well and appropriately? This is a question that every product manager and designer must think carefully. Here, the author sums up 10 important principles and elaborates on them for your reference.

1. Initial Analysis

It is important to analyze users' concerns. First, analyze which pages on your website are the main ones and those pages have the most traffic, which will help you design the distribution of web pages on mobile websites. Second, you must search for keywords that users are using, because users often use them to reach your website. These analysis results will play an important role in mobile development.

2. User features

Compared with desktop users, mobile users must have different requirements. When developing and designing mobile websites, you must consider user features. If you target young people, make sure they can easily access your website when driving, shopping, or taking part in other activities. Therefore, analyzing user features is also important in the development of mobile websites.

3. less use of images

In fact, using images on mobile websites is useless, so we do not recommend using images in large quantities. The reason is as follows:

• The network connections used by mobile users are usually relatively slow, and it is difficult to download a large number of images. If the images are large, it will take a long time to load them. Therefore, try to avoid using images.
• Each image requires a new HTTP link, which slows down webpage loading.
• In the development process, because the resolution of the device is different, the size of the image will be different, so adding a large number of images will increase the additional workload.
• If you really need to use images on your website, you must use CSS Sprite. CSS Sprite can improve loading speed in a timely manner.

4. Javascript independence

Because browsers on mobile devices cannot support JavaScript, they cannot rely on JavaScript to develop mobile websites. However, if, in the next few years, Apple, Android, BlackBerry, and other systems have the possibility to fully support JavaScript, this problem can be solved.

5. Avoid a drop-down list

Avoid a drop-down list in a mobile website. The drop-down list only applies to desktop websites, because you can move the cursor to any tab to view the drop-down list. The drop-down list can be used, but it is not recommended to use it on a mobile website.

6. Compress JavaScript and CSS code to optimize the download speed.

As mentioned above, do not rely on JavaScript. If Javascript is required, we recommend that you compress JavaScript and CSS code. JavaScript and CSS compression tools are also easy to use.

7. Horizontal and vertical layout

Recently, we have seen that many mobile websites support both horizontal and vertical la S. These two la s are well applied on the iPhone and Android platforms, but not all smartphones. When developing a mobile website, you should design a single layout format. That is to say, users can only view the content in a single direction in a scrolling manner. By default, the single direction should be vertical, because this is the natural form that the user expects. If the page has images in use, they should also support vertical scrolling. Vertical and horizontal la s are not recommended for mobile devices.

8. Understand mobile device functions

A good way to develop mobile websites is to understand the most popular features of mobile devices. Then, you can integrate these features into your developed website, which will be a highlight of your website.

9. Provide regular website links

The information contained in a mobile website is very limited. To accommodate more information, you can provide links to some regular websites on the mobile website homepage.

10. Website speed

When developing mobile websites, website speed should be given priority. Your website should quickly transfer website content. If you want to do this, try to avoid using JavaScript and flash. The most important guiding principle of mobile Web is to pay attention to the functions and speed of websites.