News

If you don't have a web site designed for mobile phones, you don't just risk frustrating your customers when they visit you online. You're also likely to drain their smartphone batteries. That's the message from a research team based at California's Stanford University.

The researchers published a paper entitled “Who Killed My Battery: Analyzing Mobile Browser Energy Consumption” at the World Wide Web 2012 conference last week. They used an Android handset to browse a variety of popular web sites, measuring the phone's energy consumption as it loaded and rendered web pages. As well as analysing each page, the team also measured the energy needed to render individual web elements such as images, JavaScript, and CSS.

Enabling your website for mobile visitors doesn't just improve the consumer experience. It also makes commercial sense.

The latest organisation to produce figures that prove what we've known for a long time is UK-based search marketing agency Mediarun. It's found that ‘bounce rates' from mobile devices are around 40%, which is about 10% higher than on desktop browsers. The company says this means 5.6% of all mobile traffic is being lost by online retailers... and that's a significant amount of lost sales.

This ground-breaking move makes it easier for developers to create mobile web sites that are tailored to the precise needs of online visitors.

Ringmark is the mobile browser test process introduced at Mobile World Congress 2012 by Facebook. It's designed to help developers learn more about each mobile web visitor without requiring visitors to provide any personal details. Coremob, the Core Mobile Web Platform Community Group from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), is eventually expected to be handed control of the project.

51Degrees.mobi, the leading provider of device detection and web optimisation solutions, has announced a breakthrough in mobile device detection.

By using the built-in accelerometers on modern smartphones, together with the CPU temperature monitoring that's standard on most mobile devices, 51Degrees.mobi can now determine whether a mobile phone is being held in a user's left hand or right hand.

With 51Degrees.mobi fully integrated within Ingeniux CMS and Cartella, Ingeniux customers can easily target web content to mobile devices, preview content display on a wide range of devices, and accelerate development of advanced mobile features.

New figures from smartphone owners in the USA show that retail websites are still more popular than stand-alone apps.

Nielsen's detailed analysis of smartphone usage reveals that retailers' mobile websites are more popular than their mobile apps, with Amazon having the most popular retail mobile website of all. The top five retail apps and websites combined - Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Target and Walmart - reached nearly 60% of US smartphone owners.

The research also revealed that shoppers preferred retailers' mobile websites over mobile apps, although consumers who used retailers' mobile apps tended to spend more time on them.

We've enjoyed a busy month and, with our sights set on the new mobile devices launching next week at Mobile World Congress 2012, we'd like to share some of the highlights.

DotNetNuke Corp., the global leader for adaptive web content management software that keeps businesses' online presence relevant and effective, today announced a licensing agreement with 51Degrees.mobi, the leading provider of automatic mobile device detection, mobile web optimization, and mobile analytics solutions.

If you've not upgraded yet, here are 4 great reasons to upgrade today:

1. Your web site isn't detecting the latest mobile phones and tablets
2. We've made significant improvements to speed and accuracy
3. The APIs and Lite device data are entirely free for commercial use
4. The Premium product includes automatic weekly updates and many more device properties

A new version of 51Degrees.mobi device data is available from today.

Our Premium data set now includes two new properties to identify handsets with a 3D-compatible display and 3D camera. In addition, the regular weekly update for new and amended device specifications has taken place.