Is your website mobile-friendly? “All signs suggest that online browsing will be done increasingly by mobile phone,” writes the Wall Street Journal online’s Kelly Spors in “Serving Your Customers With Mobile Marketing,” In fact, she notes that a report from Nielsen Mobile shows 15.6% of U.S. subscribers actively use their mobile devices at least once a month and the number is rising quickly.
Tips to help you “mobilize” your site:
- Check your current website for mobile compatibility. Spors points to an article from Entrepreneur (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27646666/), which notes that if your site uses HTML, a mobile device will have little or no problem viewing content if it is organized properly. Otherwise, you’ll need a provider that enables server-side filtering to control what mobile users receive.
- Extra Tip: You can use Firefox’s free Web Developer extension to check if your site is mobile-friendly. Use this tool to disable images and Website coding to see if your content will make sense on mobile phones.
- Create a Mobile Version of Your Website. For optimum results, set up a second version of your website just for mobile users, to address their specific needs. These versions are very basic "mirrors" of your original site.
- Extra Tip: It's a small investment to purchase a .mobi domain name; this domain extension tells the device it's a website made for mobiles
- Make It Functional. Mobile usage is important for local businesses, with people using their mobile devices for of-the-minute local shopping needs. So only the most basic pages and information should be included on your mobile website. For example, a mobile user may go to your site just to get basic contact info or your store’s location. To make sure your site loads quickly and functions well on mobile devices, keep the design very basic and use minimal (and small) pictures and simple, short text.
- Take It To The Next Level: Consider mobile marketing tactics like text-messaging campaigns.
Take The Tip:
- Read “Serving Your Customers With Mobile Marketing”: http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/11/11/serving-your-customers-by-mobile-phone/
- Click here for an overview of how to create a functioning mobile version of your current site from Netregistry.com, a web hosting and online marketing service provider.
True, more and more people are accessing the internet from their mobile. If people aren't setting up their sites to be viewable from a mobile device, they're gonna be left behind.
Posted by: Marc | October 22, 2009 at 04:58 PM