This is of course the present and future as developers should develop for Mobile first. Consider, 67% of smartphone users are more likely to buy and engage with organizations with a site that is not usably rendered on a smartphone (i.e. Mobile friendly). 57% of users will not recommend your organization if the Website is not usably rendered on a smartphone (i.e. Mobile friendly) (References below).
Now consider the 2nd item in conjunction with Facebook’s/Google’s social graph search as online recommendations now have a significant effect on SEO so not only are we directly losing customers and referrals but we will also drop in the Search rankings as a result further exascerbating our attempts to attract students.
Mobile Web & Interface Design
Mobile App Development
Mobile Web apps (HTML5) vs. native Android apps.
Now recall… Business drives development
Google Dart – A nice new environment by Google but we have also just seen the introduction of Swift by Apple
As an example, please see sunyacc.edu which is optimal or sunysccc.edu which are very good on your cell phone. As a project, use one of the SEO toolkits to monitor SEO over time.
12-2-13 Page Ranks (http://www.statscrop.com/)
ACC
Sunyacc.edu is ranked #556,842 in the world, a low rank means that this website gets lots of visitors. The average pages load time is 0.638 seconds, it is very good. This site has a very good Pagernk(5/10), Its seo score is 86.4%. IP address is 198.102.1.185, and its server is hosted at Queensbury, United States. Last updated on Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:36:33 GMT.
SCCC
Sunysccc.edu is ranked #370,909 in the world, a low rank means that this website gets lots of visitors. This site is worth $6,430 USD and advertising revenue is $17 USD per day. The average pages load time is 0.768 seconds, it is very good. This site has a very good Pagernk(5/10), it has 1,399 visitors and 4,617 pageviews per day. Currently, this site needs more than 1.29 GB bandwidth per day, this month will needs more than 40.11 GB bandwidth. This site is listed in DMOZ, Yahoo Directory. Its seo score is 84%. IP address is 192.235.16.4, and its server is hosted at Schenectady, United States. Last updated on Mon, 01 Jul 2013 03:41:05 GMT.
HVCC
Hvcc.edu is ranked #406,169 in the world, a low rank means that this website gets lots of visitors. This site is worth $26,890 USD and advertising revenue is $73 USD per day. The average pages load time is 0.654 seconds, it is very good. This site has a very good Pagernk(5/10), it has 2,570 visitors and 19,532 pageviews per day. Currently, this site needs more than 4.01 GB bandwidth per day, this month will needs more than 124.41 GB bandwidth. This site is listed in DMOZ, Yahoo Directory. Its seo score is 87.5%. IP address is 151.103.16.26, and its server is hosted at Troy, United States. Last updated on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:55:14 GMT.
Continuing on, what if you have a limited staff? If this is the case then it makes sense to develop for the lowest common denominator as a mobile site will render fine on a desktop but not vice versa.
Lastly, there are areas for innovation and development in handhelds and mobile computing as many of the bigger players do not invest their resources in development for this platform. Please see the following article and consider what you could develop.
Ajax Tools May Power Web Apps For iPhone
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=200001584
Research & White Paper Resources
[listyofiles folder=”wp-content/uploads/mobile-computing” options=”table,filesize,icon”]
References:
Google, 2013: http://www.themobileplaybook.com/en-us/
Google, 2012: http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2012/09/mobile-friendly-sites-turn-visitors.html
Econsultancy, June 2013: http://econsultancy.com/us/reports/reducing-customerstruggle
Brand Anywhere and Luth Research, 2010: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/11/prweb4794234.htm