M.dot Extinction: The Next Evolution

of Mobile Web

Since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago,

the cause of the extinction has been speculated

and debated.

While there are many theories, we still don’t know

the definitive reason for the extinction. There are

a wide range of theories including climate change,

volcanism, sifting continents, an extraterrestrial

impact - as well as some more far-fetched ideas

like decimation by aliens, dinosaur “wars,” and

“paläoweltschmertz” (the idea that dinosaurs just

got tired and went extinct).

oday we are facing an extinction in the

technology world - m.dots are dying out

- and it’s in the retailer’s best interests. A

survey of the Internet Retailer 500 found that m.dot

sites for ecommerce dropped from 79% in 2013

to 59% in 2014, and the trend continues. While

numbers still need to be confirmed for this past

year, m.dot sites were expected to lose 50% s

hare in 2015.

T

Unlike the dinosaurs, the cause of this extinction

won’t be a mystery. M.dots are an outdated

technology with many limitations. When the need

for mobile websites emerged, retailers created

separate m.dot sites to create a better user

experience for customers on mobile devices.

While this was a huge improvement to serving the

desktop site to mobile shoppers, m.dots have failed

to evolve with customers’ rising expectations and

advancements in technology. As a result, they’re

disappearing from the online world - here are the

5 causes of the m.dot extinction.

Poor SEOThe nature of an m.dot site results in poor SEO.

Since m.dot sites are a separate entity with

duplicate content, they have the more SEO

compliance issues than any other mobile web

solution. Google doesn’t like redirects and it

penalizes page rankings unless every page and

linkable asset is meta tagged with rel=canonical

tags that point to which link is the original, desktop

or mobile. The effort to implement and maintain

this tag strategy is often under resourced or not

undertaken at all by retailers leading to poor search

engine visibility, lower traffic, and less conversions.

Slow PerformanceM.dot sites have a slower initial load time due to the

redirect, this doesn’t allow for perfectly live content

as the requests need to go back and forth between

an intermediary server. Today’s customers expect

speedy performance and won’t have the patience

to wait for a slow m.dot site to load - 40% of

consumers will abandon a website that takes more

than 3 seconds to load.

Social Sharing IssuesTwo separate URLs also leads to issues with social sharing. If a potential

customer on their desktop clicks a link which a friend shared from a

mobile device, they will encounter a tiny m.dot site on their large deskop

screen. This poor user experience could result in a lost opportunity to

create a loyal customer - wrongly executed redirections cost enterprise

retailers $34,000 per month on average.

Multiple Screen SizesM.dot sites are optimized for a specific screen size, but mobile

devices today have a wide range of screen sizes. A layout that

is optimized for the screen size of an iPhone 5, may not be the

optimal layout for the screen size of an Android Galaxy S6. This

issue becomes even more prominent when looking at tablets. A

good mobile web solution should be scalable and customizable

to optimize the site across all devices and screen sizes.

Maintenance ChallengesA m.dot website has a completely seperate codebase from

the desktop site, which means you need to spend the time

and resources to manage two websites. Retailers often

don’t have the resources to maintain both sites, resulting in

content that is outdated or inconsistent across sites.

Just as life evolved and flourished after the extinction of dinosaurs, next-

generation mobile web solutions have emerged to address the limitations

associated with m.dot websites. Mobify’s modern adaptive design approach

uses a single tag to modify the desktop content to deliver mobile-optimized

experiences across devices and screen sizes. The single URL ensures optimal

SEO, effective social sharing, and zero redirects. Maintenance is also made

easy as any content updates to the desktop version automatically appear in the

mobile version of the website.

Contact Mobify today to learn more about our modern adaptive design

approach to mobile web, visit www.mobify.com or contact us via hello@mobify.com or 1-866-502-5880.