Making a Web site 'Truly Mobile'

As the webmaster of a Pocket PC community site that is the Internet home of a Club Pocket PC user group, I have been involved with development and support of Web applications for the desktop and Pocket Internet Explorer for quite some time. The Web site I am responsible for, BostonPocketPC.com, was launched in January 2001. A Pocket IE-friendly version of the site has been available since the launch date as well.

A few months back, I began research, planning and development to enhance the mobile version of our Web site. The project eventually resulted in what is now known as BostonPocketPC.com Mobile Edition (www.bostonpocketpc.com/pocketpc), a fully interactive and Pocket IE-friendly version of our standard Web site. Along the way, I learned quite a bit about what it takes to completely bring an online community to the mobile Web and Pocket PC.

While every software development project has its own unique aspects, there are a lot of similarities that exist as well. I will try to identify the most common items, issues, and concerns when making a Web application mobile.

Determining User Needs (and Wants)

The start of any normal software development cycle includes user input and specifications. Bringing an application to Pocket Internet Explorer is no different in this respect. In determining what work would be undertaken, I spent time was spent in gathering user input. As BostonPocketPC.com is an Internet (rather than Intranet) site, I also spent time gathering information from around the Pocket PC community on the Internet. My analysis found that users wanted Pocket PC communities to move to the "next level" in being Pocket IE-friendly.

Typically, most Pocket PC Web sites are of two varieties. The "regular" Web site is accessible from standard PCs. The "mobile" Web site is optimized for PDAs (including Pocket PC/Pocket IE). While the regular Web site typically is highly dynamic and interactive (with discussion forums, chats and private messaging), the mobile Web site is typically "read-only," with little or no access to interactive content. While this distinction served well in the early days of the Pocket PC when there was little wireless access and mobile content was mostly read offline, the recent increase in real-time access has made the lack of interactivity a more pressing issue. In addition, sites that did offer access to interactive content from their mobile Web site usually did not optimize that content for Pocket IE, making usability difficult and inconsistent. My research found that these limitations were a key to preventing Pocket PC-oriented Web sites from being "truly mobile." As a result, providing access to our interactive content in a Pocket IE-compatible and usable fashion became a high priority for development.

My research also uncovered some other interesting constants among users of Pocket IE:

1. The variations in content between regular and mobile versions of Web sites often made using the mobile version undesirable. In some cases, regular versions of Web sites were updated frequently while mobile versions were not. In other cases, graphics (including photos) were available and accompanied content on the regular Web site, while the mobile equivalent was text-only.
2. Lack of consistent navigation in mobile Web sites often created a usability issue. While great care is often given to regular Web sites for the presentation and usability of navigation tools, many mobile Web sites simply rely on the Back button as a primary navigation method. This lack of navigation often detracted from the useful content of a mobile Web site.
3. Lack of consistent presentation layouts within a mobile Web site were often a major cause of frustration for users. This issue is most prevalent in Web sites that start as Pocket IE-optimized, but then link to Web pages that are not. Moving between pages that worked well in Pocket IE and those that required much horizontal scrolling often caused users to leave the content or the Web site entirely.