According to recent research, more than one-third of American adults shop online via mobile devices. However, the vast majority of websites are still fond of desktop-oriented versions. Is it necessary for every website to have a mobile version and how should they relate to each other? We discuss this with expert Denys Malakhov.
Denys Malakhov is a successful web developer and a businessman in the high-tech sector. His field of education is applied mathematics and computer science. His academic background laid a solid foundation for his future IT and web development career. Mr. Malakhov has over 10 years of experience in creating WordPress-based websites for clients from different countries. At the beginning of his career, he worked with IRC and Netscape, and mastered HTML, JS, CSS, Flash, and ActionScript, possessing the widest possible competence in development and programming.
He founded Web Studio DM LLC and successfully brought it to the US market. His company is engaged in full-cycle website development and subsequent maintenance, ensuring high quality and security. Denys has earned recognition and respect in the professional community due to his many years of work and significant achievements. His clients highly value him for his reliability, professionalism, and ability to provide a high level of functionality and data protection. In 2024, Denys was a member of the jury for the International Business Award “Cases&Faces”. The committee invited him due to his high professional achievements and great level of expertise.
You have experience working in the jury of the Cases&Faces – a prestigious international competition. Tell us about it in more detail.
Yes, in 2024, I participated as an independent judge on the jury of the Cases&Faces competition. It’s an annual International business conference & award. The main purpose of this award is to identify and support outstanding ideas, trends, projects, and individuals offering innovations in the fields of science, culture, education, entrepreneurship, management, social practices, digital technologies, etc.
I was invited into the judging panel as a seasoned professional with a distinguished career. My area of responsibility was judging in 3 categories: “Mobile Site and App of the Year,” “Technology Executive,” and “Digital Executive of the Year.”
Tell us about your own company, the Web Studio. According to customer reviews, it has an outstanding reputation in the field of creating websites.
Yes, I’m the owner and General Manager of Web Studio. Over the years the company’s revenues and the number of customers have grown. The company has achieved good results thanks to my unique business strategy. It consists of a personal approach to each project: I lead all stages of the website creation process and interact with the client at every step. This strategy allows a better understanding of the client’s needs and expectations. From the moment of the first contact to the completion of the project, I maintain direct communication with the client, without intermediaries. So I can quickly react to the desired changes and adjustments. My client sees that his ideas and edits are taken into account immediately, which strengthens trust. A lot of customers, satisfied with the individual approach, return to us for new projects or recommend us to their partners. Thanks to this strategy, the customer base grew by 40% within a year by attracting regular and referral customers. The average project’s cost has increased by 20%, – satisfied customers are more likely to order additional services or choose more expensive packages. Thanks to my full involvement in the creation of each site, the company receives not only profit growth but also a reputation as a reliable partner ready to maintain close cooperation at all stages of work.
Having a full mobile version of a website – how critical is it now?
Critically important, I’d say, every website should have mobile responsiveness to be fully effective. Considering how many hours a day adults spend on a mobile phone screen. If potential customers land on your site and understand that it is inconvenient to navigate on a mobile device, they may leave it and go to a competitor’s site – and you’ll lose profit. Your reputation will suffer too. I’d like to add that a negative mobile user experience will hurt your website’s rankings in the search engines – so users will experience difficulties trying to find Your portal online.
How should the desktop and mobile versions of a website relate to each other?
Ideally, the functionality should be completely identical, only the design may differ slightly. The main task is that for a person who is used to navigating the desktop version, the mobile version does not look like something completely different, and vice versa. First of all, this concerns selling sites, but in general, it is true for informational ones too.
What criteria are most important for the mobile version of the site to be popular with the company’s customers? So that you don’t want to click the “switch to the full version” button?
Ease of navigation. And so that you can find everything you want to find, and do it quickly. Since mobile and desktop versions of sites are usually developed by different teams of programmers (this is especially true for large companies), sometimes it happens that their functionality is not 100% similar, but 95-99%.
There are a very small number of features that are available to users of the desktop version and are not available to users of the mobile version, and vice versa. And if a person starts and gets used to using one version, and then at some point he has to use another – disappointment may occur. However, other situations are no less common – when, for example, a user makes purchases in his favorite online store only from a mobile phone, and he has never used the desktop version, he may not even know about its existence. And accordingly, he will never know about the difference between them, if there is one.
Only those sites that sell something should have mobile versions or all of them?
All of them, of course. Here, as they say, “size matters.” The desktop version of the site is extremely inconvenient to view and generally works on a mobile device, no matter how hard it tries to optimize for its small screen and touch navigation. Mobile versions on large computer screens often look bare and unfinished – it’s like you came to a fully equipped house, and you are offered only walls, a roof, and windows. If we talk about which websites need mobile versions first of all, then I would highlight three categories of such sites – first, online stores, second, social networks, and third, news sites, and mass media sites.
In your opinion, when will the situation develop to such an extent that mobile versions of sites will be considered the main ones, and desktop versions – auxiliary?
Only when mobile devices will be considered the dominant way of Internet navigation, will desktop computers become a rare and outdated option. Now, in the whole world, these indicators are approximately equal. There are several countries where the mobile Internet dominates – for example, China, India, Thailand, and Indonesia – where the share of mobile devices in the total volume of Internet surfing exceeds 60%. And, for example, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, and Russia are among the most conservative countries, where the share of mobile devices is “only” 42-45%. In the USA, the distribution is about 50/50 with a meager advantage in favor of desktops. Therefore, mobile versions can, of course, claim to become mainstream – but not in the coming years.
