Full text: http://bit.do/optimizedwebtv The purpose of this study is to evaluate the adaptation of some of the world’s most popular websites to the “post-pc era” of using multiple devices for accessing the web. Up till recently the PC used to be the only device used for accessing the WWW. This has changed dramatically over the past few years with the introduction of many powerful Internet-connected devices such as Smart Phones, Tablets and Smart TVs. Due to the many differences between these devices in terms of screen size, hardware power, input methods etc. in most cases a PC-optimized website is not optimally viewed in these devices, resulting in poor usability and User Experience. In this survey 49 of the world’s most visited websites, according to Alexa.com, are being examined to see if they offer optimized versions for Internet-connected mobile devices and Smart TVs. Results show wide support for mobile devices in contrast to very limited support for Smart TVs.

1. Are Websites Optimized for Mobile Devices
and Smart TVs?
Emmanouil Perakakis
mperakakis@staff.teicrete.gr
Brunel University & TEI of Crete
Uxbridge, London, UK
Gheorghita Ghinea
george.ghinea@brunel.ac.uk
Brunel University
Uxbridge, London, UK
Evanthia Thanou
evathanou@gmail.com
TEI of Crete
Ierapetra, Crete, Greece
MOBILE DEVICESDESKTOP/LAPTOP

2. Introduction
We lived and still live in a world of Objects
We will live in a world of Connected “Things”
We now also live in a world of Devices

3. Introduction
Internet of Things Web of Things
“Things” being part of the WWW
Communicating using standard web
technologies through Web Interfaces

4. Web on non-PC devices
The Web started as a desktop native
For many years, the only way to access the WWW was through a Desktop/Laptop PC.
Then it was “opened” to Mobile Phones and later to Tablet devices

5. Web on non-PC devices
Recently, the Web is making it’s way to even more devices.
So you can, or possibly will in the near future, browse the web from:

6. Web on non-PC devices
• But browsing the web on other devices is not an automatic thing.
• Every device has different properties, such as screen sizes, input
methods, network bandwidth etc. , and even users can be in
different states.
• So, for a website or a web application to be able to work optimally
on non-PC devices, we need to take into account the specific
devices properties.
• Failing to do that, will result in bad User Experience (UX) or even
complete incompatibility with the device.

7. Optimizing Content for Devices
Custom device-specific Websites
A different website from the Desktop will be developed from scratch, optimized for the specific device. It will
share the same content with the main website, often sharing the same database, but the presentation layer
will be different.
(+) Optimized for every device (+) Easier to Develop websites compared to RWD
(-) Develop new website for every device (-) Difficult to maintain (-) Questionable SEO
(-) Even for same kind of device may need more websites
Device Specific Apps
Apps were popularized with mobile phones. It is common practice to develop a native App for the device which
usually consumes the content of the website, sharing the same database, but using a totally different
presentation layer.
(+) Optimal for every device (+) Optimal UX
(-) Need to create Specific App for every OS (-) Difficult to maintain (-) Absent from Search results
Responsive Website (RWD)
This more recent method, became very popular in the past 2 years. The main difference is that the same
website is used for all devices, but it adapts (responds) to the specific properties of each device.
(+) Single website for all devices (+) Easy to maintain
(-) Much more difficult to develop in order to respond to all device correctly
There are three main methods to optimize Web content for Devices:

8. Platforms Overview – Market Landscape
Mobile Phones & Tablets
• An established internet-
connected device
• There are two major
platforms: iOS and Android
• Plus a few other popular
platforms, such as Windows
Phone and Blackberry
Smart TVs
• A newly internet-connected
device
• Smart TV market is very
fragmented
• Μost popular Smart TV platforms (2014):
– Samsung: 26.4%
– LG: 14.3%
– Sony: 14.4%

9. Platforms Overview - Users
On Mobile Phones:
• e-mail (91%),
• searching the Internet (76%),
• Social Networking (75%) and
• news alerts (62%)
are among the most popular
uses of the phone
On Tablets:
• Email (69%) and searching
for info online (70%) are
the most popular daily
activities to perform
• Social networking is also
popular at 64% and news
alerts on 52%.
REF: Salesforce.com, “2014 Mobile Behavior Report”, 2014.
Nielsen, “Australian Online Landscape Review”, 2013
Mobile web browsing is gaining popularity daily while desktop browsing is
decreasing as many surveys indicate

10. Platforms Overview - Users
Smart TVs - Surveys
• Consuming Web on a Television device is not a
new thing, but it’s not a secret that it has failed
to capture the interest of viewers so far
• On a recent study by Nielsen in 2013 in
Australia although ownership of Connected
TVs has increased (33% own a Connected TV),
only 5% of them use it to access the internet.
• According to the Australian Connected
Consumer Report the key problems are the
lack of interest, lack of know-how, bad UX and
lack of available content.
• A survey in Germany indicates that “many
responders find the use of the Internet with
the smart TV very inconvenient”.
• Web Browsing activity only captures the
interest of 10% of the users while other
functionality such as Social Media, Shopping,
Maps etc has an even lower than 10% usage.
Smart TVs – Key Problems
• Bad User Experience: As most
aforementioned studies indicate, the current
UX on the Smart TV is not pleasant for users
and causes frustration.
• Input Devices: Browsing a website whose its
interaction design was built with the
mouse/keyboard input devices in mind with
a remote control, can be a very unpleasant
and frustrating experience.
• User State: Users of a Television are in a
different “state of mind” than when using a
PC or a mobile device and normal websites
don’t take this factor into account. A relaxed
navigation style should be preferred
• Lack of TV-Optimized web content: Although
most new TVs include some kind of a web
browser, websites are optimized for desktop
or mobile, not TV, and this can easily result in
an unpleasant UX.

11. The Website Survey
• In order to study the current state on the levels of adaption
of web sites to non-desktop devices, a survey was
conducted on some of the world’s most popular websites.
• A list of the 100 most visited websites was retrieved from
Alexa Internet (June 2014).
• From these, 49 websites that fulfilled our requirements
(explained later), clustered into 8 categories, were tested
whether they had an optimized version for delivering their
content on (a) mobile phones, (b) tablets and (c) smart TV
devices.

12. Categorization of websites
• Blogging Platforms (5)
• Commerce (17)
• Informational (4):
• News (14):
• Search (26):
• Services (6):
• Social Media (9):
• Video (5):
• Network Services (8):
• Pornography (4):
• Torrent (2):
Conclusively, the final list came down to 49 websites: 3 Blogging platforms, 12
Commerce sites, 4 information websites, 8 News websites, 5 Search engines, 5
web services, 8 Social networks and 4 Video websites.

13. Testing Devices
• Smartphones: There were two representative smartphones, iPhone 5s for
iOS devices and Samsung Galaxy S4 for Android devices. These two
operating system platforms are the leading Smartphone systems today.
• Tablets: An Apple iPad 2 (iOS) and an Asus transformer (Android and MS-
Surface) were used.
• Smart TVs: Three devices were used, as there are more platforms for
Smart TVs: Samsung Smart TV 2014 model UE55F6670, an LG Smart TV
2013 model 42LA660S and a Google TV Sony NSZ-GS8 set-top box

14. Testing Methodology
• In order to have an accurate picture for this survey, each website was carefully
examined.
• For each of the selected websites, two pages were loaded, the home page and a
typical content page.
• In order to confirm the availability of a responsive website, an App or a Custom
website on a device category, it was decided that even if it was available in a
single platform platform is enough.
• A study limitation was that the standards for accepting a website as Smart TV
optimized were kept to an absolute minimal (large fonts, correct display, simple
navigation).

15. Results
49
48
24
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Mobile Tablet TV
Overall Optimization per Device
• Results on testing website adoption on the
three different types of devices clearly show
how serious website designers take the large
movement of the users towards mobile
browsing
• All tested websites had at least one mobile-
friendly method to consume their content.
• Tablet-optimized website versions were also
very popular, with only 1 website out of 49
not having some optimized version for a tablet
device
• It is also clear that TV devices are not
considered very important yet, as only 24 out
of 49 websites had some kind of optimized
version for TV compared to 49/49 for mobile
phones.

16. Results
29
25
9
19
8
6
44
43
12
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Mobile Tablet TV
Website Adaption on Devices
App
Custom
Responsive
• Looking at the preferred
optimization method, clearly
apps and responsive versions are
preferred over custom device-
specific websites
• Quite often, websites had both
an app and a mobile-friendly
website
• Tablet-optimized sites are
popular but not as popular as
phone-optimized

17. Results – Category Breakdown
0
5
10
15
20
25 Mobile
Responsive, App and Custom adaptation availability of top 49 websites on Mobile, Tablet and Smart TV
categorized by type of website
• it seems that blogging platforms and search engines prefer the use
of responsive websites and completely avoiding custom designs
• News, Social and Commerce websites have a somehow equal
allocation of the three types of formats
0
5
10
15
20
25 Tablet
0
5
10
15
20
25 Smart TV App
Custom
Responsive

18. Conclusion
Mobile-optimized website has become a standard, to ensure a
better User Experience to the many mobile users
As the popularity of these devices has grown massively, all the websites of the survey have at least one mobile
version, while many of them have both an app and a responsive or custom website optimized for smartphones
and tablets.
Smart TV-optimized websites are not common.
Smart TVs, being the new kind of internet-connected device that grows popular, has not attracted the attention
of the website owners.
Users are not happy with the current TV Web Experience.
It was evident, both from the surveys studied and from the tests that were performed in the survey carried out
in this paper, that current web content is problematic on Smart TVs and does not meet user expectations

19. Future Work
Extend survey on a greater number of popular websites
Create Guidelines for UX-optimized websites for Smart TVs
Perform user-testing on prototype TV-optimized websites
Maybe extend to other devices (watches?)

20. So…
are Websites Optimized for
Mobile Devices and Smart TVs
MOBILE DEVICESDESKTOP/LAPTOP