Booking a holiday over the phone is not unusual, but how about booking a holiday on your phone? The mobile internet and mobile devices are quickly becoming a major focus for many businesses; a recent survey by the Office for National Statistics revealed that almost 50% of internet users in the UK are now accessing the web with their mobile phones. Many companies are now developing dedicated mobile websites to cater to the smaller screen sizes that come with mobile devices. To reduce loading times these websites are usually stripped down, reducing the functionality of the site. However, when you view a VSI-thinking developed website, such as the website we created for Neilson Holidays, on a smartphone there is no loss functionality and the site still loads quickly, even on a 3G connection. Take a look for yourself...
On a full desktop browser the Neilson holidays website has a whole range of great features such as a search facility, user reviews and slideshow banners highlighting special offers. All of these features and functions are compatible with mobile web browsers and work in exactly the same way, delivering the same user focused experience across multiple platforms and devices. These industry leading features were also developed in such a way that no browser plug-ins are necessary; this means the Neilson holidays website displays correctly on Windows Phone, Android and Blackberry smartphones, as well as Apple's iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad which are notorious for their lack of compatibility with the Adobe Flash plug-in.
Adobe Flash has been the go-to tool for creating dynamic, interactive elements such as slideshow banners and sliding search bars. To ensure compatibility with as many devices as possible range it was vital that the dynamic elements were developed without plug-ins; making the new Neilson website compatible with older web browsers as well as mobile devices.
The Neilson website is even fully compatible with basic browsers such as the built in "experimental" web browser on the Amazon Kindle reader. While the experience is a bit slower there is still no loss of functionality, the search system, slideshow banners and web content all work and display correctly just like it does a fully featured web browser. This means that it's entirely possible to book a Neilson holiday on a Kindle...
One of the key reasons our websites are compatible with all web browsers, even experimental ones, is because our development work sticks to web standards. Web standards are a set of guidelines which ensure web developers create websites compatible with all browsers. All of the on screen effects, features and search functions used throughout the Neilson website are developed to meet these standards. The Neilson website was also developed to use the cleanest HTML possible, all content is added in clean HTML to ensure it's compliant and compatible with all web browsers; this also has the added benefit of being easily indexed by the search engines.
Take a look at how well the Neilson website runs on mobile devices for yourself on VSI-thinking's YouTube page; don't forget to subscribe to our channel so you can stay up to date with our latest work.