The wonderful World Wide Web continues to rapidly evolve and amaze us by delivering powerful solutions for businesses, so much so that most Canadian businesses today consider their online presence as their lifeline. Businesses are adapting to technology trends not only just to serve, but to survive, so they can have a presence under their customer radars. The journey to staying up to par with tech trends can be highly rewarding but can also come with some grueling challenges.

A Paradigm Shift

According to TechCrunch, by the end of 2013, mobile devices will overtake desktop PCs as the dominant Internet platform. No surprises here as we are already experiencing this change facilitated by mass marketing campaigns that push convenience of mobility from all directions. What is more interesting is a ComScore survey done earlier this year that projects a third of the world’s population to become mobile Internet users by 2015.

For businesses, this means that the level playing field has changed. A critical communication platform, your web presence, will need to embrace the emerging dominance of mobility. Websites will have to not only adapt to different browsing methods but also present content effectively to a variety of screen resolutions. Think about all the different gadgets and their respective sizes along with the issue of browser compatibility on those devices… How do you keep up with those variables?

The good news is that native browsers on most mobile devices do come with some level of intelligence and adaptability. However the finger pinching, exercising the art of precision tapping on links, zooming in and out of content, significantly deteriorates the user experience and can make some people nauseous.

The Smart Solution?

One solution would be to create a mobile website catered to a specific resolution. Depending on your goals, a better solution however would be to develop a “responsive design”.

A responsive design responds to user’s behavior and environment based on the screen size, device platform and orientation. Regardless of whether you are accessing the website on a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, a TV or a smartphone, the website dimensions adjust accordingly to enhance user experience. In other words, it makes your online presence pretty slick.

Romney vs Obama

There is a thing or two that Obama’s PR team knows about online marketing. When Obama won in 2008, the election campaign raised over half a billion dollars online through small donors. This year, his team recognized that the online audience is a mobile audience. They used a responsive design that organizes content in 3 different ways based on the mobile device one is using, with carefully having stress areas in the design to remind users to donate to his campaign.

Romney’s campaign had a busier website, which although looked good, was not responsive. They did have a mobile website, designed specifically for smart-phones, which unfortunately became hard to access once you clicked on the “full site” link.

The Advantage

As a believer of this industry, I would like to think that Obama won partly because of his cleverly crafted website. After-all it was his pivotal point of communication. Whether it is a mobile website or a responsive design, a better fit can be determined after evaluation of your goals. The advantages of a responsive design are:

• Cost effective compared to customized solution for each platform
• Improved user experience across multiple platforms
• Saves time and provides improved performance
• Supports a wide range of browsers

To test how responsive your website is or how it looks in different mobile devices, check out this really neat tool: IsMySiteResponsive?