Mobile Sites - which style?

6 replies
Hey gang,

This was probably covered here already, but when creating mobile sites, is it better to design it with multiple pages or a 1 page accordion?

Thinking out loud:

-Benefit of a multipage site is getting each individual page ranked, right?
-Benefit of a 1 page accordion site is that everything is right there on the one page, no need to wait for a different page to load...

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Paul
#mobile #sites #style
  • Profile picture of the author limecellular
    In terms of ease of use, its better to create one long, accordion-like page because the scrolling action is second nature with your average user. The tabbed action of multi-page has more attention deficit users discarding the page altogether.

    Think about it, you want the page to be instantaneous and easily accessed. Multi-page is a bit more frustrating.
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    • Profile picture of the author cu@datop
      Yep, my thoughts exactly, thanks for confirming!
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  • Profile picture of the author flyinghammers
    I think the multiple page approach is better. A one page mobile website will take longer to load. With a multiple page site you give the users the option of which pages to look at.

    FYI- There is a new mobile forum. Check it out.
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    • Profile picture of the author WillR
      Originally Posted by cu@datop View Post

      -Benefit of a multipage site is getting each individual page ranked, right?
      -Benefit of a 1 page accordion site is that everything is right there on the one page, no need to wait for a different page to load...
      Originally Posted by limecellular View Post

      In terms of ease of use, its better to create one long, accordion-like page because the scrolling action is second nature with your average user. The tabbed action of multi-page has more attention deficit users discarding the page altogether.

      Think about it, you want the page to be instantaneous and easily accessed. Multi-page is a bit more frustrating.
      Wrong. Accordion is NOT going to make the website easier to use. All an accordion style menu does is slows down the loading time of the mobile website... a very BIG NO NO.

      One of the huge advantages of a mobile website over a regular website is suppose to be the load time. By using an accordion style menu you are placing the entire webpage content on the homepage which means the entire website has to load all at once for the viewer to just see the homepage.

      Think about it. If I have a 5 page website and each page is around 20kb in size, that means in total my site is around 100kb. If I was using a regular style menu then a user who visits my homepage only has to download 20kb worth of data. If however I was using an accordion style menu then the same user who visits my homepage now has to download all 100kb worth of data. This is going to make the homepage up to 5 times as slow and cost the end user unnecessary data charges.

      The correct way to do things is to have all the content on separate pages just like you would a regular website. It's the correct way to do things on an SEO standpoint AND to maximize the end-user experience.
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      • Profile picture of the author KabanaSoft
        Originally Posted by WillR View Post

        Wrong. Accordion is NOT going to make the website easier to use. All an accordion style menu does is slows down the loading time of the mobile website... a very BIG NO NO.

        One of the huge advantages of a mobile website over a regular website is suppose to be the load time. By using an accordion style menu you are placing the entire webpage content on the homepage which means the entire website has to load all at once for the viewer to just see the homepage.

        Think about it. If I have a 5 page website and each page is around 20kb in size, that means in total my site is around 100kb. If I was using a regular style menu then a user who visits my homepage only has to download 20kb worth of data. If however I was using an accordion style menu then the same user who visits my homepage now has to download all 100kb worth of data. This is going to make the homepage up to 5 times as slow and cost the end user unnecessary data charges.

        The correct way to do things is to have all the content on separate pages just like you would a regular website. It's the correct way to do things on an SEO standpoint AND to maximize the end-user experience.
        I do agree in splitting up the content into separate pages, but you don't necessary have to place the content of all pages into one master page if you go accordion style.

        What i have done in the past is have empty placeholder div's on the homepage for each separate page's content, and then have buttons (say in an accordion) with click events that dynamically load the proper content into the respective placeholder div via an AJAX Get request (with a loading image while waiting). Last part of the code hides the inactive div's and loading image.

        Most smartphones can run javascript these days so its not that hard to do a http get for a url and populate the html results into a placeholder div.

        Sometimes i actually prefer this approach because you don't have to leave the page to load separate content, and there is typically less overall http get requests when you only load parts of the site that are needed rather than entire separate pages...which can reduce the actual bandwidth being used.

        But SEO wise doing this messes up the internal linking of your pages, as there is no physical link to the other pages...so there are advantages and disadvantages of both ways.
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  • Profile picture of the author danielkanuck
    Another thing you have to consider is the kind of phone that your prospects are using. Some phones that offer web browsing don't show websites in the same way. If i had to put my money on it, i would go with the 1-page website.
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