D&H extends mobile website access beyond iOS with new mobile site

D&H’s mobile capacity previously was an app designed for iOS specifically. Now non-Apple phone users can also get D&H site access while on the move with a new website that launched Monday in both Canada and the U.S.

Jeff Davis D&H

Jeff Davis, senior vice president of sales at D&H Distributing

On Monday, distributor D&H launched a brand new mobile version of its website, with navigation and functions optimized for smartphone screens. The new site, which is available in both the U.S. and Canada, extends D&H’s mobile capacity, which had previously been limited to iOS phones, to other devices like Android, BlackBerry and Windows phones.

“We have a very robust website – dandh.ca in Canada – and we have an iOS app we used for our mobile strategy,” said Jeff Davis, senior vice president of sales at D&H Distributing. “But we got a lot of customers who said ‘we don’t have Apple for our smartphone. When are you coming out for an app or mobile website for the others.’ We did a lot of analytics work to see what phones and devices are being used and we realized we were missing a market. Our regular website was too hard to navigate on a small device, and for smartphones, we just had Apple support.”

The mobile site launched Monday is thus a brand new site, not a redesign of something that was there before.

“This new site is intended to attract all mobile users, and support all smartphones,” Davis said.

“There’s deeper functionality on the main website, because you have to skinny it down for mobile, but all the key things from the main site that our users find the most useful are therem,” he noted. This includes a mobile optimized ordering screen and order tracking, the watch list and other search functionality. The dandh.ca shopping cart synchs between the user’s phone and their PC, so items in the user’s cart are available on either device.

Davis indicated that iOS users are likely to keep using their app however, because it still has some functionality that the mobile website does not yet have.

“This is because the iOS app has been out for years, while the mobile site is brand new,” he said. “The information is the same of the iOS app and the mobile website, but there are some things available on the iOS app that aren’t on the mobile site, like the ability to scan a mobile barcode.”