Mobile Website Engineering and Mobile Web Best Practices Guidelines: A Reality Check

INTRODUCTION Background In recent years, the scope of the internet has expanded dramatically. Due to rapid development of technology and increased capabilities, the internet has grown in every aspect and has become an essential means of communication. As this growth occurs, the World Wide Web (WWW) becomes more readily available to different cultures and more open to an idea which, in turn, creates opportunities for more diverse activities in many new areas. This influx of diversity is causing a tremendous growth in the total number of websites in existence (Descy, 2006). The amount of internet users in the world has grown over 336% since the year 2000 (Informa, 2007). Throughout this time period, we have witnessed an explosive growth in the use of mobile handheld devices, such as cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). According to Gartner, worldwide mobile phone sales increased 12 percent in the second quarter of 2008 (Gartner, 2008). As the computer, media player, and cell phone all evolve into a single handheld device and new high-speed wireless data networks improve, browsing the mobile web is becoming a more compelling experience. Now people using a Smartphone, PDA, iPad, or other internet-ready device can search and browse the internet, retrieve local traffic information, check bus, train, and airline schedules, and look up weather reports anywhere they can get a signal (Newton, 2008). All growth predictions indicate that usage will increase even faster than the PC-based internet. More than 150 million mobile websites are likely to exist by 2017 (Newton, 2008). The internet has obviously expanded beyond the realm of PCs, and in the future, many people's first internet experience will occur on a mobile device. The mobile web is rapidly increasing the world's overall use of the internet. Fifty percent of the world's population, or 3.3 billion people, have mobile phone subscriptions, including 84% of U.S. residents (Informa, 2007). Studies indicate that in October 2005, 28.4 million users were accessing mobile internet on average about twenty-nine times per month. Just nine months later in June 2006, the figure had grown to 34 million people accessing on average 34 sessions per month (Newton, 2008). The number of mobile device users accessing mobile internet sites in the United States is growing rapidly. In fact, nearly one in three mobile device users are accessing internet sites on their phones (Kroski, 2008; Church & Smyth, 2007). The mobile web is seen as a new way to communicate and reach an increasing part of the web audience: the mobile device users (Salazar, 2008; Livingston, 2004; Chen & Nath, 2008). For instance, during the last presidential election, campaign leaders used mobile websites to inform mobile device users, about campaign developments and decisions. Besides electoral campaign leaders, business managers in various industries are becoming progressively more aware of the mobile web. In fact, 40% of major brands had already deployed mobile marketing campaigns, by 2007, 89% of major brands were planning to market via mobile devices by 2008, and more than half of the brands are planning to spend between 5 and 25% of their total marketing budget on mobile marketing by 2013(Leonard & Riemenschneider, 2008). This research, coupled with the fact that there are currently less than one billion personal computers in the world (Informa, 2007, illustrates how mobile devices are fast becoming the primary interface with the internet for the majority of users. This paper examines the impact the W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices standards have on the delivery of web content to mobile devices, as well as the impact of mobile usability on website design. The main problem with web-enabled mobile devices (e.g., iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) is the lack of overall usability of most websites. All major organizations are beginning to feel the impact of mobile web device usage on the way day-to-day business is being conducted (Campos et al. …