By Igor Faletski Add comments

Mobile Web 2014: No Pinch, No Zoom, Tons of JavaScript

Dec 222009

Well, maybe a little bit of pinching. But not too much.

As the mobile web breaks growth record after growth record, let’s step back for a second and think about what happens next. Today’s web surfing experience, characterized by a mix of desktop & mobile-friendly websites, will make way for something better. What will the mobile web feel like in 2014, five years from now?

Going from website to website will feel like switching from one iPhone app to another. It is still relatively rare to see a mobile website, but more are launched every day. One of our favourite past-times at Mobify is discovering “mobile web chains” – starting with a mobile-friendly website and clicking offsite links to other mobile-friendly sites. A four or five node mobile web chain is already common (eventually it is interrupted by a desktop-only site). With big publishers, content sites and popular CMS distributions all going mobile, the “pinch & zoom” experience will soon feel as ancient as “Best viewed in Internet Explorer” banners.

Location-aware search will include vast quantities of real-time data from retailers, web platforms and government agencies, becoming a key mobile web use case. Watching my sister spend 30 minutes looking for the right shoe size in four different retail outlets made it clear that local search is a big problem waiting to be solved. Retailers have a fairly up-to-date knowledge of what’s in stock – it will inevitably make its way to buyers through popular search engines, together with many other streams (the Twitter-Google deal is only the beginning). Meeting up with friends and family (and looking for the right Christmas presents for them) will start with a mobile search bar.

With desktops, mobiles, netbooks and tablets all heading to the same Web destinations, ads will learn to position themselves accordingly. Recent Android devices like the Nexus One and Motorola Droid have increased pixel density (480×854) which is not addressed by the guidelines of the mobile advertising industry. If a bigger mobile ad size is introduced, it will start overlapping with desktop ad standards maintained by the IAB. In a world where any kind of device can navigate to any webpage, more and more advertising decisions will be made client-side, enriched by sensor information. Display ads will adapt depending on the user’s viewport, instead of being placed statically around a webpage.

What do you think the mobile web will evolve into?

  • http://benradler.com Ben

    I think you’re spot on in the sense that retailers and other sales-driven outlets will begin meshing their inventory with their online presence. I’ve always thought it was a great idea to have up-to-date inventory shown for local stores on websites, but very few businesses are able to afford and create a reliable system for this.

    I’m not sure if I agree with the trend away from zoom/pinch means of viewing sites on mobile devices. Certainly these methods of scaling sites meant for full-screen desktop and notebook computers are not the end-all solutions, but I don’t see them disappearing all that quickly.

  • http://mobify.me Igor

    Thanks, Ben. I see less and less pinch & zoom experience on mobile – from long tail to top publishers. We’ll wait and see!

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