Texas Fishing Mobile Web

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department hosts an extensive and well-used website, visited by more than 25,000 people per day. Web statistics indicate a growing share of this customer base, perhaps as high as 25 percent, is connecting via mobile device. As mobile web surfing becomes more common, our agency is seeking ways to use these technologies to reach our constituents. Some teams are exploring possibilities for downloadable applications, but this route presents some disadvantages: generally, an “app” is written for a specific mobile device, making it necessary to create multiple versions or risk excluding groups of users; and producing an app may require hiring contract programmers, which can strain limited state budgets. Our group chose instead to build a small set of web pages within the larger site that are specially designed for anglers using mobile devices. This meant not only developing a mobile-friendly stylesheet and page template, but also considering what information would be most important to mobile anglers and presenting it in the most useful way. The Texas Fishing Mobile Web offers weekly fishing reports, a searchable database of fish records and site-specific fishing regulations, and quick-dial links to agency telephone hotlines. The mobile web pages can be read by any internet-enabled device and were built by reallocation of existing staff hours at no additional cost.