If you built a mobile website you just automatically redirect mobile visitors on your main website to the mobile version, right?
Well, not always. I built a few mobile websites that need a more sophisticated redirection. In some cases I’d argue you might not want to redirect at all.
How to do mobile redirection
Mobile website != desktop website
In many cases the mobile website just contains a subset of the content that’s available on the main website. That’s because mobile websites are made with the mobile context in mind. This results in very short texts and location based services.
Moreover: there just isn’t much web traffic from mobile devices if you compare it to the traffic that browsers on traditional computers generate. So many organizations don’t see the necessity for a mobile website that is as comprehensive as the desktop variant.
This means that if you would land on a some web page, there will most likely be no mobile equivalent of that content. So there’s no reason to redirect the user. Unless mobile devices are likely to crash.
Users can redirect themselves
In the early days the differences in capabilities between handhelds and PC’s was very large. But now those devices are smartphones and are powerful hardware. Users can now choose between the predictable security of the main websites and the usability of mobile websites. It’s, bar some exceptions, a matter of preference now, not a necessity.
You can get away with redirecting users to a mobile website once, but don’t redirect them all the time. A user that visits the main website with a smartphone most likely just prefers the main website, so don’t keep him away from the content you want to disclose on the web.
Even better than redirecting: just add a link to your main page to your mobile website and vice versa. That’s a strategy that works as long both websites can be viewed on a smartphone.
