The Case for Mobile Only Themes

Mobile Only Theme
Mobile only themes provide multiple unexpected benefits to mobile surfers.

If you’re struggling to meet Google’s Mobilegeddon deadline, I suggest you try a different theme for your mobile website, perhaps using WPTouch or something similar. This will allow you to quickly cater to a multiplicity of mobile development issues like:

Manage data issues. Some web users will have browsing limitations and will prefer faster loading pages. The bar is really low here.

User Experience. An “app-like” experience improves engagement and increases reading time simply because people find things faster. Consider deploying a theme or design that looks and works like an HTML5 app.

No scrolling please. Actually, people don’t like to scroll. It’s pretty hard when you have to do it over and over and over just to reach one of your pointless widgets.

– Simplifies the multiple screen size problem. Which is actually not a trivial issue in itself.

Having a different design or theme helps decreasing your hosting costs, streamlines development and gets you started into thinking of your mobile site as a continuation of the desktop web browsing experience. If your interaction loop is mobile first then you should start by making an app or full blown HTML5 application. Here are some additional resources for mobile development:

– 26 Of The Best Mobile Website Resources On the Internet

Google’s Multiscreen Resources

W3C Mobile Development Resources