Smartphone and tablet owners are increasing at a frantic rate to the point that will you be missing out on a considerable chunk of your audience if you solely focus your website on computer users. The obvious approach would be to create a mobile version of your website but some of the more popular websites go as far as having their own downloadable apps. Launch the app and you are immediately taken to an optimized version of the website. If you have the time, resources and experience, developing a mobile app is the best choice as long as you make it available in the top two marketplaces – the Google Play Store and the iTunes App Store. With your app published, you can track how many people downloaded your app and you have the potential in adding extra features like push notifications, offline reading and possibly some other communication features. You may also optionally serve mobile ads if you hope to gain some revenue.
But if you require a short term approach or don’t have the coding experience, don’t invest your resources on mobile app development just yet. It is better to figure out a way to take a responsive Web design approach to your website so your site looks great on all types of mobile devices. This broadens the compatibility beyond iOS and Android devices and eliminates the need to code a separate mobile website from scratch. Mobile apps will still load faster but you can just encourage your readers to bookmark your website and add a shortcut to their home screen. Give your site a nice favicon so the shortcut resembles a mobile app and you should be good to go. It also won’t hurt to add RSS support so people can subscribe to your site via popular mobile news readers like Feedly and Flipboard.