Write you are…

Mobile-friendly websites are a great idea, when they work. But I am getting sick of websites making themselves – wait for it – less functional by launching mobile versions. Maybe I don’t want to use the mobile version, maybe I had a very happy relationship with the regular one until you interfered with it, so how about giving me the choice instead of forcing me onto it?

Take the Guardian website, for example (much as I love it). It used to work brilliantly on my Sony Ericsson mobile browser. Then the mobile version launched and I found myself being forced onto the mobile site, which has pared-down menus and a lot less content. Sometimes I’ll go to read an article and get a message telling me it’s “not available on mobile yet”. It will offer me a link to read it on the main site, but that usually just bumps me back to the menu. I can select ‘standard/desktop’, but I’ll get forced back onto the mobile version within two clicks.

I can now read Guardian content using Opera Mini or Snaptu as per my last post but that wasn’t possible on my previous phone. And if I follow a link from, say, Twitter, it automatically opens in my mobile browser. Which is perfectly capable of loading the normal website version, but instead my mobile browser gets forced onto the mobile website and then, not infrequently, I’ll be told the article isn’t available on mobile. And just to repeat: while it will then offer me a link to read it on the main site, this never works. It just bumps me back to the main menu. So if I try to open a Guardian link from Twitter and find it’s not on mobile, I have to open Opera Mini, go to Twitter’s mobile webpage and click on the link from there.

Next up: the BBC News website. Guardian.co.uk’s problem is that it’s far too eager to adapt to my mobile – the BBC is the opposite. It doesn’t recognise that I’m on a mobile. You can load a mobile version of the BBC website but it won’t automatically force you onto it. Well, fine, I hear you say. You’re complaining about that from the Guardian. Is there no pleasing you? But the thing is, the BBC’s regular website doesn’t play nicely with my mobile. Guardian.co.uk is an already-mobile-friendly website that keeps forcing me onto a not-so-great mobile version. The BBC website is a non-mobile-friendly website that doesn’t automatically take me to a mobile-friendly version. They should just swap and then everything would be great.

Right now, I can’t follow BBC News links from, say, Twitter. They go very wrong on my phone. Bits of type on top of each other, gigantic scrollbars, that kind of thing. My last phone used to switch itself off in protest. And now I see The Times’ new website will be doing the same thing. From the FAQ:

• How do I access the new websites from my mobile?

  To access the websites on your mobile, simply type the web address, either www.thetimes.co.uk or www.thesundaytimes.co.uk into your phone’s browser or text TIMES to 87700 and we will send you a link to The Times mobile site or text SUNDAY TIMES to 87700 and we will send you a link to the Sunday Times mobile site. iPhone users will be directed straight to the websites. All other mobile users will be redirected to the mobile compatible versions of the sites.

But what if people don’t want to be directed to mobile-compatible versions? Especially if, like the Guardian’s, they don’t contain all the same content. My mobile browser is perfectly capable of loading most websites and if it needs any help, I can just go in via Google, which is set to format webpages for my phone.

Let me just sum this up. Speaking as a Sony Ericsson mobile user:

The Guardian website works fine on my mobile but automatically sends me to the mobile version which lacks content. It is adjusting itself for mobile, badly.

The BBC News website does not work fine on my mobile and does not automatically send me to the mobile version. It is failing to adjust itself for mobile despite badly needing to.

The Times Online website does not let me see if it works fine on my mobile but automatically sends me to the mobile homepage. It is adjusting itself for mobile, in a completely useless and pointless fashion.

All of which belongs in a LOLCAT captioned “mobile websites: doin’ it wrong”.

So if you’re developing a mobile website, how about asking yourself this really simple question: does my website work on X phone browser? If it does, don’t force people onto the mobile version. Give ‘em a choice. If Twitter can do it, so can you. (With Twitter, you choose ‘mobile’ or ‘standard’ and it respects your decision.) If not, don’t expect people to use a separate URL to get to the link they wanted, but do force them onto a mobile-compatible version. It’s not rocket science.