What weight do you give the W3C % results when deciding about a mobile site builder?

TequilaShot · 22nd Sep 2012, 09:20 PM

Hey guys,

I've been looking into the limecellular platform and the Pijnz mobile site builder because I absolutely love the look of the sites I saw built with their mobile builder, the different options they offer and what seems to be ease to build the site, however...

I tested a bunch of sites built with this builder on the W3C mobile validator and my concern is that NON of the sites passed the orange line and MANY of them tested at 0%.

In comparison:

I have tested a site I built with WillR template and it tested at 95%.

I have also tested a site I built with easy wp mobile generator by sunnygal and it tested at 67% - though a lighter green, it's still in the green.

My question is - what weight do you give to the w3c results when considering your mobile site builder?

I am also wondering - if these results really matter, how come limecellular chose to add this builder to their program and not another? And, if you have a white label platform with limecellular - are you aware of this issue? what is your take on it?

I was considering their white label, but I want to make an educated decision and would appreciate hearing some members thoughts about this here.

Gratefully.

WillR · 22nd Sep 2012, 10:00 PM

When testing a mobile website on a site like the W3C validator, be sure that it is actually the mobile site that is being validated. This will depend on the redirect being used.

If you have the direct link to the mobile site and that is what you are entering then good, those results should be accurate. But if they are using a redirect script that simply serves a mobile website on the same url, if you run that url through the validator it will be their standard website that is being validated not the mobile one. The validator does NOT follow redirect scripts so you must give it the actual url of the mobile site.

In regards to Pinjz, the only experience I have had with them was in having them banned from this forum a few months ago because they were caught out creating fake accounts that were giving fake testimonials for their own services. Ever since then I have had a bad taste in my mouth in regards to that company. If they are willing to do that then it's not a company I ever want to deal with -- especially when there are so many other decent and honest companies out there.

That was just my own personal experience though.

TequilaShot · 22nd Sep 2012, 10:38 PM

Thanks Will, I appreciate your response and your WSO of course

As for the testing - each url I checked was the MOBILE url, so I know that those sites do not validate well - if at all - on this validator, I just wasn't sure how much weight to give the w3c validator results in my decision.

Originally Posted by WillR

When testing a mobile website on a site like the W3C validator, be sure that it is actually the mobile site that is being validated. This will depend on the redirect being used.

If you have the direct link to the mobile site and that is what you are entering then good, those results should be accurate. But if they are using a redirect script that simply serves a mobile website on the same url, if you run that url through the validator it will be their standard website that is being validated not the mobile one. The validator does NOT follow redirect scripts so you must give it the actual url of the mobile site.

In regards to Pinjz, the only experience I have had with them was in having them banned from this forum a few months ago because they were caught out creating fake accounts that were giving fake testimonials for their own services. Ever since then I have had a bad taste in my mouth in regards to that company. If they are willing to do that then it's not a company I ever want to deal with -- especially when there are so many other decent and honest companies out there.

That was just my own personal experience though.

Jay Moreno · 23rd Sep 2012, 11:04 AM

Hi TequillaShot

Whilst w3c mobile validator is becoming a little dated its still a good resources to know about it... you will find that sites that even score 0% will still work on newer smartphone however they are more likely to have underlying issues, such as degraded performance or slower page loading speeds, in addition to not necessarily working on the broadest range of mobile devices.

Contrary to what a lot of people say it does identify HTML5 tags - and doctype however it appears to be really looking for valid XHTML MP content so will give you a small deduction for that.

Additionally it will penalize you for having an overall page size over 20kb - that's a tough limit to maintain, especially if you want to go more advanced with your functionality and styling. I personally would always keep your page size as low as possible... have seen many responsive designs have page sizes way over 1mb! If you have a 4G LTE connection and an unlimited data plan page file size is less of a concern, but for those on slower connections and limited data bandwidth it can be an issue.

In addition the lower score usually is good indication that the site will typically have a much slower performance too ie too big file sizes = slow page load

It's a good idea to try and understand what the validator is telling you - that way you will have a better idea if the information is relevant or not at least if you are hosting your own mobile site and building them yourself you should be able to fix many of the issues, unless of course your using a mobile generator you are using has encrypted all its code

WillR's mobile site builder WSO certainly gets you going in the right direction straight out of the box. Most generators i have seen particularily for WordPress don't typically address many of these issues and tend to score sub 85% - it's not impossible to achieve scores well above 85% with WordPress it all comes to the developer and their understanding of mobile.

Most well designed mobile sites that have taken the extra effort to address file size, page load speed, etc will typically rate 85% or higher - we always try to get as close to 100% as possible

As well as checking the validation you should also check the page loading speed too - this page should help you: Free Mobile Performance Testing with Akamai's Mobitest

Check how fast your site takes to load on your own smartphone too just make sure it is not connected to a Wifi connection

Many mobile resources including Google recommend loading time of 3.5 to 4.0 seconds or faster.

If you site is not loading within this recommended time frame and you want to improve your loading time check out Google Page Speed Test... https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

The information on Googles Page Speed Test doesn't rate how fast your site loads, but grades your site on the performance enhancing techniques/technology you are implementing - its a great indication if you have everything setup correctly for both your desktop site and your mobile site. Some feedback may need you to change your server configuration - however most good hosts will typically be already properly configured.

So if you follow Google's recommendations and your pages are still loading slow - chances are you probably have excessively large images, or too many images, a lot of javascript loading, perhaps large css files too.

Hope that helps

Cheers,

Jay

John Ayling · 23rd Sep 2012, 05:18 PM

Thanks for the useful performance measuring resources Jay.
Found Akamis mobitest interesting - with some of my sites being twice as fast when accessed on an Android system compared with an iPhone.

Kevin Z · 23rd Sep 2012, 06:43 PM

Originally Posted by Jay Moreno

Whilst w3c mobile validator is becoming a little dated its still a good resources to know about it... you will find that sites that even score 0% will still work on newer smartphone

By not being W3C compliant you can be shutting your mobile sites to a massive slice of the market such as older Blackberry's Windows Phones etc...

It's funny that BB is not mentioned much these days due to the state of their corporation but fact of the matter is there are still tens of millions of BB in the market.

So yes to answer the original thread you shoudl take W3C very seriously when deciding on a mobile website builder.

Jay Moreno · 23rd Sep 2012, 08:05 PM

@kevinz - couldnt agree with you more - without a doubt, whilst the Blackberry 8300 is pushing 5 years old i have still seen places selling brand new ones as a pay as you go/non contract/pre paid phone.

thats how i obtained ours - ours was a nice little addition to our test suite... if you can get your code to work on an older Blackberry you can pretty much get it to run on anything! LOL

even with all these resources you can't beat testing against real devices!

WillR · 23rd Sep 2012, 09:27 PM

I guess I won't tell you guys my everyday phone is still a Blackberry. I much prefer it for email. Oops, I did just tell you.

So yes, there are still a lot of them out there.

Jay Moreno · 23rd Sep 2012, 10:21 PM

Originally Posted by WillR

I guess I won't tell you guys my everyday phone is still a Blackberry. I much prefer it for email. Oops, I did just tell you.

So yes, there are still a lot of them out there.

I tell you what will one of my test phones is an old school flip phone... if theres one thing that i am enviable about this older phone.... is its battery life!!! LOL The thing never dies!!!! hahahaha

Which BB are you using Will?

WillR · 23rd Sep 2012, 11:40 PM

Originally Posted by Jay Moreno

I tell you what will one of my test phones is an old school flip phone... if theres one thing that i am enviable about this older phone.... is its battery life!!! LOL The thing never dies!!!! hahahaha

Which BB are you using Will?

I still use the bold 9700. It's been good to me over the years. It's crap for web browsing which I find is actually a good thing because I don't want to be web browsing when I'm out and about. I have enough of that at home. I can still look up things if I desperately need to but I hardly ever use it. It's just handy for email.

Getting a dumbed down phone that doesn't do much else than email and phone is actually one of the best moves I ever made. I also removed my work email address from it because you just don't need to be contactable 24 hours a day -- life is too short. I use to get and reply to work emails all day long but now I only do it a couple of times a day when I'm at home. Guess what? No one has died and my business is still running just as it used to. Shock horror!

Kevin Z · 24th Sep 2012, 09:58 AM

Being in Toronto we hear about the doom and gloom stories about RIM\Blackberry all the time. Fact of the matter is the BB is still the preferred options for many corporations all over the world due to the stability and security of the OS.

The question is if BB10 will give them the lift they need to stop the corporate bleeding.

John Ayling · 25th Sep 2012, 01:09 AM

After looking at a lot of sites now through the W3C validity checker, it is obvious that it is in need of a major upgrade.
The last update was done in 2010 - almost 2 years ago now - W3C mobileOK Checker

Outdated areas that caught my eye were that it does not reconize many HTML 5 attributes and flags them as suspicious.
It also provides a warning if scripting is being used. If you're not using scripting these days you are losing out on a lot of useful functionality, as well as performance tweaks.

Did find it helpful with respect to making sure images have width and height tags, etc..

With respect to speed I would pay more attention to Page Speed Insights by Google.

If you are using jQuery Mobile then make sure the website builder uses deferred loading of the javascript files - this will give you lightning fast initial page load speeds without having to compromise on functionality and all the other goodness of jQuery mobile.

Jay Moreno · 25th Sep 2012, 10:50 AM

Originally Posted by John Ayling

After looking at a lot of sites now through the W3C validity checker, it is obvious that it is in need of a major upgrade.
The last update was done in 2010 - almost 2 years ago now - W3C mobileOK Checker

Outdated areas that caught my eye were that it does not reconize many HTML 5 attributes and flags them as suspicious.
It also provides a warning if scripting is being used. If you're not using scripting these days you are losing out on a lot of useful functionality, as well as performance tweaks.

Did find it helpful with respect to making sure images have width and height tags, etc..

With respect to speed I would pay more attention to Page Speed Insights by Google.

If you are using jQuery Mobile then make sure the website builder uses deferred loading of the javascript files - this will give you lightning fast initial page load speeds without having to compromise on functionality and all the other goodness of jQuery mobile.

Hi John, i totally agree it needs to be updated.

As you can see that's why its imperative to understand what it's telling you, which obviously you do, and take those concerns into account and also understand how to fix any issues if that's possible.

However i still don't believe there is any excuse to getting a big fat 0% without exceptional circumstances especially so if i can get a jquery gallery to get +65%

Hope that helps,

Cheers,

Jay

TequilaShot · 25th Sep 2012, 12:08 PM

Thanks for extremely helpful post Jay.

Originally Posted by Jay Moreno

Hi TequillaShot

Whilst w3c mobile validator is becoming a little dated its still a good resources to know about it... you will find that sites that even score 0% will still work on newer smartphone however they are more likely to have underlying issues, such as degraded performance or slower page loading speeds, in addition to not necessarily working on the broadest range of mobile devices.

Contrary to what a lot of people say it does identify HTML5 tags - and doctype however it appears to be really looking for valid XHTML MP content so will give you a small deduction for that.

Additionally it will penalize you for having an overall page size over 20kb - that's a tough limit to maintain, especially if you want to go more advanced with your functionality and styling. I personally would always keep your page size as low as possible... have seen many responsive designs have page sizes way over 1mb! If you have a 4G LTE connection and an unlimited data plan page file size is less of a concern, but for those on slower connections and limited data bandwidth it can be an issue.

In addition the lower score usually is good indication that the site will typically have a much slower performance too ie too big file sizes = slow page load

It's a good idea to try and understand what the validator is telling you - that way you will have a better idea if the information is relevant or not at least if you are hosting your own mobile site and building them yourself you should be able to fix many of the issues, unless of course your using a mobile generator you are using has encrypted all its code

WillR's mobile site builder WSO certainly gets you going in the right direction straight out of the box. Most generators i have seen particularily for WordPress don't typically address many of these issues and tend to score sub 85% - it's not impossible to achieve scores well above 85% with WordPress it all comes to the developer and their understanding of mobile.

Most well designed mobile sites that have taken the extra effort to address file size, page load speed, etc will typically rate 85% or higher - we always try to get as close to 100% as possible

As well as checking the validation you should also check the page loading speed too - this page should help you: Free Mobile Performance Testing with Akamai's Mobitest

Check how fast your site takes to load on your own smartphone too just make sure it is not connected to a Wifi connection

Many mobile resources including Google recommend loading time of 3.5 to 4.0 seconds or faster.

If you site is not loading within this recommended time frame and you want to improve your loading time check out Google Page Speed Test... https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

The information on Googles Page Speed Test doesn't rate how fast your site loads, but grades your site on the performance enhancing techniques/technology you are implementing - its a great indication if you have everything setup correctly for both your desktop site and your mobile site. Some feedback may need you to change your server configuration - however most good hosts will typically be already properly configured.

So if you follow Google's recommendations and your pages are still loading slow - chances are you probably have excessively large images, or too many images, a lot of javascript loading, perhaps large css files too.

Hope that helps

Cheers,

Jay

TequilaShot · 25th Sep 2012, 12:11 PM

Thank You for a helpful post John.

I was wondering if you happen to know of any mobile validator that is more up to date than the W3C.

Originally Posted by John Ayling

After looking at a lot of sites now through the W3C validity checker, it is obvious that it is in need of a major upgrade.
The last update was done in 2010 - almost 2 years ago now - W3C mobileOK Checker

Outdated areas that caught my eye were that it does not reconize many HTML 5 attributes and flags them as suspicious.
It also provides a warning if scripting is being used. If you're not using scripting these days you are losing out on a lot of useful functionality, as well as performance tweaks.

Did find it helpful with respect to making sure images have width and height tags, etc..

With respect to speed I would pay more attention to Page Speed Insights by Google.

If you are using jQuery Mobile then make sure the website builder uses deferred loading of the javascript files - this will give you lightning fast initial page load speeds without having to compromise on functionality and all the other goodness of jQuery mobile.

TequilaShot · 25th Sep 2012, 12:18 PM

This sounds good Jay, I do have your redirect plugin, I'll have to check your templates when ready.

Originally Posted by Jay Moreno

Hi John, i totally agree it needs to be updated.

However i still don't believe there is any excuse to getting a big fat 0% without exceptional circumstances especially so if i can get a jquery gallery to get +65%

Hope that helps,

Cheers,

Jay

Jay Moreno · 25th Sep 2012, 02:35 PM

Originally Posted by TequilaShot

This sounds good Jay, I do have your redirect plugin, I'll have to check your templates when ready.

will be sooner rather that later!

22nd Sep 2012, 09:20 PM	#1
TequilaShot Active Warrior Join Date: 2004 Posts: 81 Thanks: 151 Thanked 31 Times in 26 Posts	What weight do you give the W3C % results when deciding about a mobile site builder? Share on: Hey guys, I've been looking into the limecellular platform and the Pijnz mobile site builder because I absolutely love the look of the sites I saw built with their mobile builder, the different options they offer and what seems to be ease to build the site, however... I tested a bunch of sites built with this builder on the W3C mobile validator and my concern is that NON of the sites passed the orange line and MANY of them tested at 0%. In comparison: I have tested a site I built with WillR template and it tested at 95%. I have also tested a site I built with easy wp mobile generator by sunnygal and it tested at 67% - though a lighter green, it's still in the green. My question is - what weight do you give to the w3c results when considering your mobile site builder? I am also wondering - if these results really matter, how come limecellular chose to add this builder to their program and not another? And, if you have a white label platform with limecellular - are you aware of this issue? what is your take on it? I was considering their white label, but I want to make an educated decision and would appreciate hearing some members thoughts about this here. Gratefully.
	"Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth: 'You owe me'. Look what happens with a love like that - It lights the whole sky." ~Hafiz

22nd Sep 2012, 10:00 PM	#2
WillR Digital Marketer War Room Member Join Date: 2010 Location: Australia Posts: 12,475 Thanks: 1,984 Thanked 8,187 Times in 4,079 Posts	Re: What weight do you give the W3C % results when deciding about a mobile site builder? Share on: When testing a mobile website on a site like the W3C validator, be sure that it is actually the mobile site that is being validated. This will depend on the redirect being used. If you have the direct link to the mobile site and that is what you are entering then good, those results should be accurate. But if they are using a redirect script that simply serves a mobile website on the same url, if you run that url through the validator it will be their standard website that is being validated not the mobile one. The validator does NOT follow redirect scripts so you must give it the actual url of the mobile site. In regards to Pinjz, the only experience I have had with them was in having them banned from this forum a few months ago because they were caught out creating fake accounts that were giving fake testimonials for their own services. Ever since then I have had a bad taste in my mouth in regards to that company. If they are willing to do that then it's not a company I ever want to deal with -- especially when there are so many other decent and honest companies out there. That was just my own personal experience though.
	. ➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online This Week Using the Piggyback Method... .

23rd Sep 2012, 11:04 AM	#4
Jay Moreno Mobile+WP = JumpMobi.com War Room Member Join Date: 2009 Location: San Antonio, Tx Posts: 1,270 Thanks: 301 Thanked 449 Times in 309 Posts	Re: What weight do you give the W3C % results when deciding about a mobile site builder? Share on: Hi TequillaShot Whilst w3c mobile validator is becoming a little dated its still a good resources to know about it... you will find that sites that even score 0% will still work on newer smartphone however they are more likely to have underlying issues, such as degraded performance or slower page loading speeds, in addition to not necessarily working on the broadest range of mobile devices. Contrary to what a lot of people say it does identify HTML5 tags - and doctype however it appears to be really looking for valid XHTML MP content so will give you a small deduction for that. Additionally it will penalize you for having an overall page size over 20kb - that's a tough limit to maintain, especially if you want to go more advanced with your functionality and styling. I personally would always keep your page size as low as possible... have seen many responsive designs have page sizes way over 1mb! If you have a 4G LTE connection and an unlimited data plan page file size is less of a concern, but for those on slower connections and limited data bandwidth it can be an issue. In addition the lower score usually is good indication that the site will typically have a much slower performance too ie too big file sizes = slow page load It's a good idea to try and understand what the validator is telling you - that way you will have a better idea if the information is relevant or not at least if you are hosting your own mobile site and building them yourself you should be able to fix many of the issues, unless of course your using a mobile generator you are using has encrypted all its code WillR's mobile site builder WSO certainly gets you going in the right direction straight out of the box. Most generators i have seen particularily for WordPress don't typically address many of these issues and tend to score sub 85% - it's not impossible to achieve scores well above 85% with WordPress it all comes to the developer and their understanding of mobile. Most well designed mobile sites that have taken the extra effort to address file size, page load speed, etc will typically rate 85% or higher - we always try to get as close to 100% as possible As well as checking the validation you should also check the page loading speed too - this page should help you: Free Mobile Performance Testing with Akamai's Mobitest Check how fast your site takes to load on your own smartphone too just make sure it is not connected to a Wifi connection Many mobile resources including Google recommend loading time of 3.5 to 4.0 seconds or faster. If you site is not loading within this recommended time frame and you want to improve your loading time check out Google Page Speed Test... https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights The information on Googles Page Speed Test doesn't rate how fast your site loads, but grades your site on the performance enhancing techniques/technology you are implementing - its a great indication if you have everything setup correctly for both your desktop site and your mobile site. Some feedback may need you to change your server configuration - however most good hosts will typically be already properly configured. So if you follow Google's recommendations and your pages are still loading slow - chances are you probably have excessively large images, or too many images, a lot of javascript loading, perhaps large css files too. Hope that helps Cheers, Jay
	Sorry, I am too busy helping people to think of a cool signature!

23rd Sep 2012, 05:18 PM	#5
John Ayling HyperActive Warrior War Room Member Join Date: 2009 Location: Australia Posts: 225 Thanks: 41 Thanked 47 Times in 36 Posts	Re: What weight do you give the W3C % results when deciding about a mobile site builder? Share on: Thanks for the useful performance measuring resources Jay. Found Akamis mobitest interesting - with some of my sites being twice as fast when accessed on an Android system compared with an iPhone.
	Software Marketing & Licensing System for WordPress Plugins, Themes & .NET Software >> 72 Hour Special <<

23rd Sep 2012, 08:05 PM	#7
Jay Moreno Mobile+WP = JumpMobi.com War Room Member Join Date: 2009 Location: San Antonio, Tx Posts: 1,270 Thanks: 301 Thanked 449 Times in 309 Posts	Re: What weight do you give the W3C % results when deciding about a mobile site builder? Share on: @kevinz - couldnt agree with you more - without a doubt, whilst the Blackberry 8300 is pushing 5 years old i have still seen places selling brand new ones as a pay as you go/non contract/pre paid phone. thats how i obtained ours - ours was a nice little addition to our test suite... if you can get your code to work on an older Blackberry you can pretty much get it to run on anything! LOL even with all these resources you can't beat testing against real devices!
	Sorry, I am too busy helping people to think of a cool signature!

23rd Sep 2012, 09:27 PM	#8
WillR Digital Marketer War Room Member Join Date: 2010 Location: Australia Posts: 12,475 Thanks: 1,984 Thanked 8,187 Times in 4,079 Posts	Re: What weight do you give the W3C % results when deciding about a mobile site builder? Share on: I guess I won't tell you guys my everyday phone is still a Blackberry. I much prefer it for email. Oops, I did just tell you. So yes, there are still a lot of them out there.
	. ➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online This Week Using the Piggyback Method... .

24th Sep 2012, 09:58 AM	#11
Kevin Z brickandmobile.com War Room Member Join Date: 2010 Location: Toronto Posts: 309 Thanks: 60 Thanked 106 Times in 64 Posts	Re: What weight do you give the W3C % results when deciding about a mobile site builder? Share on: Being in Toronto we hear about the doom and gloom stories about RIM\Blackberry all the time. Fact of the matter is the BB is still the preferred options for many corporations all over the world due to the stability and security of the OS. The question is if BB10 will give them the lift they need to stop the corporate bleeding.
	[ brick&mobile Click here to start your Mobile Marketing business

25th Sep 2012, 01:09 AM	#12
John Ayling HyperActive Warrior War Room Member Join Date: 2009 Location: Australia Posts: 225 Thanks: 41 Thanked 47 Times in 36 Posts	Re: What weight do you give the W3C % results when deciding about a mobile site builder? Share on: After looking at a lot of sites now through the W3C validity checker, it is obvious that it is in need of a major upgrade. The last update was done in 2010 - almost 2 years ago now - W3C mobileOK Checker Outdated areas that caught my eye were that it does not reconize many HTML 5 attributes and flags them as suspicious. It also provides a warning if scripting is being used. If you're not using scripting these days you are losing out on a lot of useful functionality, as well as performance tweaks. Did find it helpful with respect to making sure images have width and height tags, etc.. With respect to speed I would pay more attention to Page Speed Insights by Google. If you are using jQuery Mobile then make sure the website builder uses deferred loading of the javascript files - this will give you lightning fast initial page load speeds without having to compromise on functionality and all the other goodness of jQuery mobile.
	Software Marketing & Licensing System for WordPress Plugins, Themes & .NET Software >> 72 Hour Special <<