According to StatCounter with its "Mobile vs. Desktop" statistics option, desktop internet users have decreased from 97% to 93%, and mobile internet users have increased from 3% to 7% over the past 12 months worldwide. While this doesn’t sound like a lot, that’s actually a fairly large jump. Will mobile users increase to 15% and desktop decrease to 85% in the next 12 months? I guess we’ll have to wait a year to find out.
What are the most-used mobile operating systems for web use? Again, according to StatCounter, it’s Symbian OS, iOS, Android and Blackberry OS in that order over the past 12 months.
The reason I mention the mobile OS stats is because it’s a bad assumption to believe all mobile web users are using iPhones or Android phones, as there are a ton of Symbian OS and Blackberry OS phones out there still and will be for a while yet.
If you have your own blog and want the widest possible audience, you have to take mobile users into consideration. While true they’re at 7% worldwide at the moment, that number could jump up quite a bit in a relatively short period of time.
What does "mobile-friendly" mean?
In a nutshell, it means three things:
- Your blog when loaded in a mobile browser doesn’t look "scrunched" or "all weird", requiring text zooming, horizontal scrolling, etc.
- Your blog will actually load in a mobile browser without issue, as there are still many sites out there that will cause some mobile browsers to spit back errors, such as a ‘too large to load’ error and script errors.
- The blog accounts not just for iOS and Android but also older mobile browsers such as Obigo.
The easiest way to have a mobile-friendly blog is to use a platform that auto-detects mobile browsers and delivers content suitable to a mobile platform. Said a simpler way, the blog engine will simply "know" when a mobile browser visits and sends content that a mobile browser will understand and display without errors without you having to do anything special; it’s automatic.
What are your best choices for free blogs that are mobile-friendly?
All WordPress.com hosted blogs to the best of my knowledge auto-detect mobile browsers easily regardless of what theme you’re using.
One of the easiest blogs to use, Tumblr also has the perk of being very mobile-friendly and works the same way WordPress.com does by auto-detecting mobile browsers.
This blog platform is a Google-owned service, and they implemented better mobile-friendliness in very-late 2010 which you can read more about here.
"I have a blog already but it’s not mobile-friendly. Should I switch?"
You can base your answer to this question on the rule of supply and demand. Has anyone said that your blog would be better if they could access it from a phone? If you’re selling a product, have your customers expressed interest in accessing your content on mobile? If the answer is yes to either, then you should consider switching to a platform that automatically supports mobile.
Content considerations
On mobile, "safe territory" is to only use text and images.
Concerning your text, you can blog as you normally would as long as you don’t use things like tables which can screw up on a mobile display.
Concerning images, you shouldn’t have to change anything. However if you want to make extra-sure your mobile visitors can view your photos, use a mobile-friendly photo sharing service like Flickr.
As for audio and video, MP3 audio downloads are okay but streaming audio isn’t such a good idea due to mobile network limitations. Video is still mostly a no-no because it’s probably true the mobile user using your site won’t be able to view it regardless of which video hosting service you use – even if it’s YouTube.
On a final note, if you’re selling something such as through Amazon or eBay (both of which are mobile-friendly), it’s generally a good idea to place the link right at the top of whatever blog post you’re writing so the mobile user sees it without having to scroll-scroll-scroll.
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