|  Have
you ever needed to visit a site from your
Blackberry or iPhone?
For
many of us, our mobile devices are usually
close by our sides. It's often easier to
make a call from your cell phone vs. a land
line, as you have your entire address book
handy, as well as your calendar and perhaps
emails.
Many
people in the business world use their Blackberry,
iPhone or other mobile device to access
the Web.
When
I'm stuck in line somewhere, I like to know
that I can visit CNN, New York Times or
other local news websites to find out what's
going on. Sites like these have spent tremendous
amounts of money coming up with mobile-optimized
versions of their websites.
But
it's easy to use the php programming language
to automatically detect when someone is
visiting your website from a mobile device,
and display a more simplified version of
your site.
How
does this work?
- When
you visit a website, your browser gives
the web server a few pieces of information
to help make sure the pages that they
serve to you render properly.
- One
piece of information is the browser type.
We have a database of 250+ mobile browsers
that our system recognizes.
- When
someone visits from a normal computer,
the php software sends the normal version
of the site.
- When
someone is visiting from a mobile device,
such as an iPhone or a Blackberry, the
php script then detects this and delivers
a different version of the site.
Try
it out:
Try
out our system. Visit the CustomerParadigm.com
site from your mobile device.
Or,
see what our mobile version of our site
looks like on a normal computer, visit
here >>
Why
should I bother with PHP for a mobile site?
One
of the most common reasons why people will
visit a mobile site is to find your phone
number or your address.
When
people are late for a meeting to our office,
they'll often try to visit our site to find
the phone number to call us, and let us
know they're running late. Or, they might
need the address to find our street number
or suite number.
This
is also true of retail sites, or any organization
that interacts with the end consumer. If
you make it easy for people to find you
on the web -- regardless of if they are
on a cell phone, iPhone, Blackberry or a
normal computer -- you'll have a lot more
success. It's a zero sum game: those that
put themselves out there will win, and the
businesses and organizations that don't
won't show up.
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