A new research by Canalys revealed that global smartphone shipments overtook client PC sales. More people bought smartphones that ran on iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS and Windows Mobile OS than they bought personal computers in the form of desktops, laptops, netbooks and tablets.

This leads one to believe that Internet traffic will be driven by smartphone users and websites need to be mobile device optimized now, more than ever in the past.

Image Credit: http://www.advancedtele.com/

Until now, web designers concentrated on designing websites that were well-suited to open flawlessly on major browsers. With the increase in smartphone-driven Internet traffic, web designers need to make that webpages are compatible with different mobile devices that run on complex mobile operating systems. Thus, mobile development is cross-platform and cross-browser at the same time. With serious bandwidth, screen-size, platform and interface deficits, mobile devices present challenges that were unknown to web designers of yesteryears.

Here are 10 important aspects to keep in mind, while optimizing webpages for smartphones.

Precision of Content
Precision of content is an important feature a web designer must keep in mind while designing mobile-optimized websites. Reduced screen size and lower resolutions mean that each pixel is valuable and only relevant content must be optimized. Low priority content can be hidden or removed altogether. Images and videos must be optimized to suit a small screen and content must be very focussed. Horizontal scrolling must be avoided and as much as possible, vertical scrolling must be used.

Single Column Layouts
As the screen size is reduced, users would have to skewer their eyes in order to be able to read text comfortably. Even when the text can be maximized and increased in size with the help of zoom, users would not like it when content appears in two or more columns. Thus, it is very important that vertical scrolling and single column formats are adopted.

Interface and Navigation
An intuitive mobile website renders information in the least confusing manner and the lowest number of clicks and taps possible. Making sure that there is always a search box near the logo on the landing page allows users to type keywords and retrieve information intuitively.

Curtailing Text-entry

Image Credit: UXMag.com

Dropdown menus are always preferable to keying in text. Pre-fill options, automated input using GPS and suggestive options help in creating intuitive websites.

Parallel Versions of Mobile Websites
While most smartphones today have a good resolution above 480 x 800, there are older cellphones which have screen resolutions of 128 x 160 pixels. A mobile website that is designed for a larger resolution screen will never look tidy or synchronized on a screen with a smaller resolution. As a designer, one may have to design parallel versions of mobile websites for lower and mid-level resolution screens.

Touchscreen and Non-touchscreen Devices
With an increasing number of people using touchscreen-only devices, web designers might be tempted to design sites that are touch-optimized. Doing so would alienate users that still use certain models of smartphones by BlackBerry and other companies, which sometimes have QWERTY keypads and no touchscreens.

Location Tracking
Optimizing a website to track a user’s location can give valuable information to owners of the website. This information is usually used to help users discover things and people nearby that matter to them. It may also help in driving contextual content to a user’s screen.

Communication

It is important to make sure that communication takes place effectively and intuitively in fewer numbers of clicks and taps. Telephone numbers on the websites must be enabled to be dialled directly, and clicking on email addresses should direct the user to email applications within the smartphone.

Social Media

With the advent of social media, website designers should design sites in such a way that content can be shared across Twitter, Facebook, Google+ Tumblr, Reddit and other social bookmarking and networking sites.

Minimalism
A web designer must always try to keep information, content, media and even design to the bare minimum. When there is very little real estate available, space is very valuable and that is just the case in mobile websites.

As of December 2011, Android devices held 47.3% of market share, Apple’s iOS held 29.6% of market share, RIM’s BlackBerry OS a share of 16%, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has a market share of 4.7% and only 1.4% of smartphone users used a Symbian device. Web designers would however need to keep in mind that all of these operating systems are equally important and while designing a website, one must optimize sites for every major platform.

We, at Indus Net Technologies can help you optimize your website for smartphones or develop one from scratch. You can get in touch with one of our consultants at info@indusnet.co.in or http://www.indusnet.co.in/mobile/

Looking into the phenomenal growth of mobile browsing, businesses are shifting their focus to mobile web. Their overall web strategy is gradually leaning towards mobile web. However depending upon the business the mobile strategy will vary. For example a business related to selling products like Amazon or Ebay will have a different strategy then a business offering news to the readers. Whatever be the business, the bigger question while creating mobile strategy is whether to use open standards like HTML, CSS and JavaScript to build the Mobile site or build it as a native Mobile App for the device you are targeting. To start with both Mobile Web App and Native App have their pros and cons. So before you start building the application a thorough evaluation is essential.

Difference between Web Apps and Native Apps

Before we proceed, let’s understand what exactly is the difference between the 2 types.

Native Apps are applications specifically designed to run on a particular platform. The whole application is installed in the device and can be executed. They are usually dependent on mobile firmware as well as the Operating System. So an app designed for Android will work only on Android devices and not on an iPhone. It needs to be ported or adapted to iOS to be used in iPhone. These Native Apps are mostly obtained through a marketplace.

Web Apps are applications which are usually accessed through a web browser and the whole or part of it needs to be downloaded onto the device each time you access it. These are created using open web standard like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. These are usually platform independent. These web apps are loaded automatically in the mobile web browser through the use of sophisticated detection technology when the site is accessed through mobile.

The image below depicts how US smartphone users use Mobile App and Browser for various tasks.

Source: Yahoo! and Ipsos, "Mobile Modes: How to connect with mobile consumers" - Aug 1, 2011

Pros and Cons of Web Apps & Native Apps

Both Native and Web Apps have their pros and cons. A clear understanding of the benefits and demerit of each along with your mobile web strategy will help in choosing one over the other and if requires choosing the both.

Rich User Interface:
Native Apps seamlessly integrate into the device features and provide a rich user experience. They integrate with phone in such a way that gives the feel of built-in functionality of the device. The improvement is mobile web technology is helping the Web Apps to gradually go through a phenomenal change in user interface. But the Native Apps clearly win here.

Connectivity:
Native Apps can be used to some extent even if there is no data connectivity however Web App requires connection to Internet to function. Native App is winner.

Performance:
As Web Apps require HTML and JavaScript rendering they are comparatively slower as compared to similar Native Apps. Native App is winner.

Availability:
The Native Apps are distributed through a marketplace like Android Market or iPhone Apps Store. And these are available subject to Approval. Even if an App is approved now, in future that may be rejected based upon the terms. This dependency of Native App for distribution is a hindrance for Enterprise to go for a Native App for their business application. On the other hand the web app can be accessed from any device without such restrictions. Web App is winner.

Updates:
The updates to Native Apps happen through the market place where as the web app update is instant. The moment you make any changes in the web app users will be able to see the updated features instantly. Web App is winner.

Cost of development:
The most notable advantage of mobile web app is that you build it once and it will be available to all devices irrespective of the configuration and platform with few changes. Native Apps being platform dependent, considerable amount of money has to be spent to develop same App for different platform like Android, iOS, Windows 7 and Blackberry. Web App is a winner here.

Engagement and Branding:
Because of the stronger integration with the mobile platform Native Apps provide a better engagement. Also they help in creating a stronger branding for your business as there will be a dedicated icon of your brand on the mobile device which is used to launch the Native Application. Native App is a winner here.

For further elaborate learning on this Max Katz has created a table that shows various differences in various categories between Native App and mobile Web App.

Conclusion:
Thanks to HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery framework like jQuery Mobile and Sencha Touch the gap between a Native App and Mobile Web App is gradually reducing. With few exceptions most of the native apps could be written into Web Apps and can provide almost similar experience. Another form of the App called Hybrid App is also seen now a days which is a web app placed inside a native wrapper. According to Jeff Haydn the Native App and Mobile web are not mutually exclusive and need to co-exist for some time.

Feel free to contact us at info@indusnet.co.in for our advice. We will be more than happy to help without any bias, as we have both capabilities and only suggest the right fit to our clients. You can also visit our mobile section at http://www.indusnet.co.in/mobile/

In any business the most important success factor is the ability to reach out to the customers.

While time is changing, the way we do our business is also changing. The technology that has impacted the most to the way we conduct our business is “Internet”. So it is important for a business to have web presence both in mainstream as well as in mobile web. Because of the convenience and instant access the focus is gradually shifting to mobile web. Hence mobile presence is of greater importance. According to a research conducted by Microsoft till 2011, 4 billion mobile phone users were present and out of that 1.08 billion are smartphones. By the year 2014, the mobile internet usage will exceed that of Desktop internet usage.

Mobi Websites are an extended version of the mainstream websites, customized for a better user experience on devices with smaller viewing space. Looking at the popularity of Mobile web, ICANN gave nod to a mobile specific domain extension called .mobi in 2005.

How mobile sites help your business:

Having a mainstream as well as a mobile only site for your business definitely has it’s advantages. According to report provided by Compuware and Brand Anywhere and Luth Research if your site is not optimized for mobile experience you might lose as high as 61% visitors. Below are few advantages the mobi websites offer:

• Through mobile websites we can reach out to customers via one more medium.
• Reach to customers through mobile search
• Increase brand and business visibility
• Mobile sites help our products and services to be at our customer’s reach anytime and anywhere.
• With a mobile friendly site customers/ visitors will be glued to the site.
• Mobile sites will help in processing transaction in real-time.
• The mobile site can have a direct dial button to reach to support team directly.

Approach for building successful mobile websites

When you are sure that you need to have a mobi website for your business, you need to have a proper strategy in place. The first and foremost thing is to understand the business and customers and how they interact with the site. It is needed to talk to customers and do brainstorming among team members to come up with answers to few basic questions like:

• Why do they use your site on a mobile device?
• What features are they using?
• What features are crucial for them when mobile?
• What are some sources of frustration?
• What devices do they use to access the mobile Web?

Once done with the preliminary investigation, there are 2 options to get the mobi website done.

1) Either you do it on your own: For this you need to be knowledgeable enough to perform the task.

2) Or Outsource it from a Professional: When choosing a professional, you should give special attention to their approach in convincing you. Mobile websites have to be always well thought of and since the number of screens and the screen space will be limited, it is important the professional outfit hired for the job has a detailed approach.

Checklist for building Mobile websites:

While designing mobi websites, special care needs to be taken to present as much information on as little space as possible. The content needs to be precise and the navigation should be simple. There are certain best practices and technologies under Mobile Web Initiative(MWI) that needs to be followed for a mobile ready website. Also to check the mobile readiness of your mobi there is a free tool called MobiForge. Following points need to be taken care while designing a mobi website:

• Make the content crisp and concise. Do not feed users excessive data in one page as it will slow the loading as well as cost money.
• Simpler navigation
• Make the user interface finger friendly
• Better User Interface
• Accessibility through all mobile platform
• Optimized call to action for better conversion
• Mobile site redirect, to automatically redirect mobile users to mobile friendly site

Conclusion:

The distinguishing feature of mobile web is its ability to offer users access to information anytime, anywhere. When you plan to launch mobile site, It is not that you create it and forget. You need to take input from visitors and customers, use analytics to know how users interact with the site and use those data to provide a better mobile experience. Businesses that are able to design and implement a successful mobile web strategy will be able to see the benefit of this ever growing and challenging medium.

Are you prepared to take advantage of this new medium? If not, you might be losing a major chunk of your business to your competitors!

Shameless Self Promotion:

At Indus Net Technologies, we do consult and create mobile websites! So, if you have decided to outsource, feel free to connect with us at info@indusnet.co.in or visit http://www.indusnet.co.in/mobile/

Byron Gordon, SEO-PR, interviews Abhishek Rungta, Founder and CEO of Indus Net Technologies at SES London 2009.

Abhishek talks in brief about:

Indus Net Technologies as an Internet strategy company,

• Its service offering spanning web design, web development and Internet marketing
  
• SEO outsourcing and
• How outsourcing helps the professionals hurt by the recession

Click here to watch the full interview.

Hello Friends,

Our new venture Indus Net Academy (www.indusnetacademy.com) will be exhibiting and doing a public launch of its e-learning products during Kolkata Book Fair starting tomorrow at Milon Mela Ground (near Science City).

We started our e-learning initiative around 18 months back and in last one and half year, we have managed to come up with:

• 12 high quality e-learning titles (mostly related to IT subjects)
• An e-learning framework to develop multimedia help / tutorial for software companies
• Capability to write illustrated technical manuals

We have also converted more than 150 fresh graduates into employable designers and programmers and got them job in web design industry.

I will request you to kindly drop in and bless us with your presence.

Our stall is in IT Park. The stall number is IT-3.

Thanking you everyone for your encouragement and support during this wonderful journey.

Indus Net Technologies has recently completed an art auction website for Emami Chisel Art Private Limited (http://www.emamichisel.com/).

The website streamlines the process of online auction and allows registered users to bid on paintings along with the floor bidders, making it a powerful tool for traditional auction houses. Thus the charm of floor bidding remains along with the convenience of online bidding for people who cannot make it to the floor.

The site concluded its first auction on 23rd February 2008 with sales for the evening touching Rs 240 million (US$ 6233766.23). Tribute to Hashmi crossed the $ 1 million mark, creating a record for any Husain ever sold at an auction, with Internet bidding contributing to a sizable portion.

We wish them all the best and renew our commitment to deliver cutting edge solutions to companies around the world.

 

Yahoo announced that they are opening up their search results for third party data integration. This will allow third party to contribute to Yahoo search experience and make it more useful for their users. It will be interesting to see how other webmasters use this open search platform to gain popularity by sharing data with Yahoo, while still retaining their competitive edge, by virtue of their database, in their respective area. We can expect to experience a long-tail of innovation in days to come. This will help webmasters, visitors and Yahoo! A perfect win-win-win situation.

On the other hand, Google already have a open platform called Google Co-op, where anyone can create custom search engine. As per Google Co-op,

“Google Co-op is a platform that enables you to customize the web search experience for users of both Google and your own website.”

Google also offer Google Subscribed Links which in their own language they define as:

“Subscribed Links let you create custom search results that users can add to their Google search pages. You can display links to your services for your customers, provide news and status information updated in near-real-time, answer questions, calculate useful quantities, and more”

The challenge

However, both the services that Google offers, has a great deal of focus on promoting Google, Google Search & Google Subscribed Links. Again, they are not directly making any change in the Google Search (at least it has not be publicly explained how it will effect user experience of a normal search).

Therefore, Google Search or Yahoo Search cannot be termed as true “user contributed” or “Web2.0″ as described by Tom O’Reilly. People won’t contribute unless they see that their contribution is making a positive impact in the search pattern and it is visible. In the current state both Subscribed Link and Yahoo Open Search will only help if a user wants to use the enhanced engine. Most Internet users will never switch these engines. Even if they are told the benefit of the plug-ins, how are they supposed to select the ones which will help them from a collection of thousands of user contributed plug-in channels? And what happens when new plug-ins come out?

Suggested solution

If search engines want to go the Web2.0 way with user contribution enhancing the overall experience and defining the way search engines display results, they need to bring user contributions to the mainstream. I feel that themed searches are the way to go. Google / Yahoo shall classify a particular user contributed plug-in into a theme. When a visitor wants to search for a business, he may choose a “Finding a business” theme. On a contrary when a visitor wants to learn about the subject he may chose the “Tutorial” theme.

Let us see an example.

We search for a very competitive keyword – “web design”. This is the result we get.

If you see, there are three different intents that the search result satisfies. A person might be searching “web design” because he:

• Want to find a web design company (blue marker)
• Want to learn web design (red marker)
• Get web design resources (green marker)

All three intents are very different. Most people do not type-in their intent in the search box to make it a specific search, because they are not specialists in using search engines. Therefore, a search engine should suggest a possible intent and display results only related to the given theme. The theme model can best work when they are formed based on a collection of user generated plug-ins. Thus user generated content can find its way to the end user in an organized way.

It goes without saying that pulling in the user generated content directly into the main search result has its challenge of weeding out spam. But this seems to be the most logical way as of now. 

 

W3C HTML Working Group has recently released HTML 5 working draft. This is a very important step forward; the same is available for review and comment at http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-20080122/

The new standard addresses the need of web application developers in more pro-active way:

• Basic template facility has been implemented with facility to repeat elements
• There are also new elements for navigation, headers, footers, figures, and dialog
• Client-side persistent storage functionality (JavaScript APIs for key/value pairs & embedded SQL databases)
• Support for server-sent events, which will facilitate persistent connections to remote data sources

Some old features like frames have been removed.

Let us see how soon new browsers start supporting these new features of HTML 5. Currently the Opera browser has the best support (though it does not support all features) for HTML 5.

Footnote:

There is an overall trend to make HTML more developer friendly so that complex web applications are developed as per W3C standards and are compatible on different browsers on different mediums. With Bill Gate’s prediction coming in about different shapes and sizes of computers in this decade which will make computers more intuitive (like the table PC), this seems to be moving in the right direction.

So let’s think, how your website will look and take shape (as per device specific browser compatibility) when displayed on a coffee table as the people sitting around it mumble the name of your company!

Abhishek

Proper project management is key to a successful project. To manage multiple projects and teams which are geographically spread across the globe, you need a quality project management tool.

As a web development company, we looked around for some quality software which serves the purpose and does not burn a hole in the pocket. Here is our pick!

Basecamp HQ:- A nice, minimalist simple to use software true to the philosophy of 37signals, the company which built it. This software is only available in a SaS (software as service) model. IMO this software best suits small projects which are communication centric. It lacks version control, task management, project tracking along with cost-benefit analysis.

Overall, very easy to easy and adapt, but reporting is not up to the mark. If you are a small business and you do most of your project management yourself, this can be a good choice for you.

Intervals:- It seems to have picked up the baton where Basecamp HQ has left. It also works on a SaS (software as service) model. It has more features (specially in terms of reporting and role management) than Basecamp HQ, thus making it suitable to manage complex projects across a large organization.

Overall, it is a good attempt to overcome the shortcomings of Basecamp HQ. However it needs to improve on its usability. It also needs to provide staged progression in terms of features and complexity so that small businesses can adapt the system. I am sure that this software will become popular as they keep improving and become old. For a SaS model company, time-tested reliability is more important than anything else.

Ace Project:- A comprehensive project management software with user friendly interface and short learning curve. It has different licensing policies and therefore you can rent or buy off (with our without source code) the software to suit your organizational needs. This software is around for quite some time and therefore seems to be reliable.

It has decent reporting capabilities, but not as good as what Intervals claim to have!

Dot Project:- The best free open source project management software that I have come across. This software looks flexible and extendable. You can plug in various modules, including Mantis (for bug tracking). The usability and reporting leaves much to be desired. So if you are looking at free project management software with access to source code, Dot Project is a good choice.

Conclusion:

There is nothing called a perfect project management software. The usage, the users and the desired result determines the one which suits best for a given organization. So take your pick from the above mentioned toolset.

 

Apart from doing software / web development on Open-source platform, Indus Net Technologies also customize and implement open-source products for clients on demand. Some popular (and free) open-source products are SugarCRM, Drupal, osCommerce for CRM, content management and e-commerce respectively.

IMHO, these are some limitations that I have observed. It is important to know them before initiating a project. These are not very serious in nature and using free open-source products remains a good option for many small and medium sized enterprises around the world.

1. Like any product, it is very important to align the product with your workflow and/or requirements. You must fit the product into the organization by making necessary changes. Therefore a gap analysis should be done and the effort must be estimated for aligning the product as per the current work-flow and/or requirements.

2. Most free open-source products lacks in usability. Therefore if you are doing a major implementation which will be used by thousands of people and you are going to pay for their time, you must consider a major overhaul of interface by involving a usability consultant from your vendor. Otherwise you will end up spending a lot of money.

3. Most free open-source products have very poor reporting system. These reports are not good enough to run a business as they fail to provide any insight into the business function that you are tracking. They should be re-done as per your company requirement aligned with your key measurement matrix for the given business function.

4. The programmers who can change the software as per your needs are the code-hackers types, who love to dive into an existing system architecture and make small changes to achieve the desired results. Therefore you must identify and hook up with the right programmer / programming company (like Indus Net Technologies – a bit of shameless self promotion) to get it right.

5. It is a myth, that implementing open-source software is free. Software code is free, not the hard work of programmers and analysts which goes behind implementing it. And you need the later to successfully implement it in your scenario and reap the benefits of the solution. Yes, it considerably reduces the cost, improves reliability and gives you a head start from where you can take informed decision about your IT needs.

Do not get me wrong. I am only listing the limitations. The benefits are well-known and they out-live the limitations any day. However it is very important that these limitations are known before proceeding.

Feel free to discuss / debate!