Mobile Websites
Image via Wikipedia
If you have a website, you would do well to make it as “mobile friendly” as is possible. By mobile friendly, we mean to make it as accessible as possible to those viewing it on a mobile device, like an iPhone, a BlackBerry or other mobile device that can connect to the internet.
Most websites today are not mobile friendly and you are likely losing business as a direct result. To test yours, simply pull your website up on your “smartphone” and see how it displays and how easy it is to navigate.
Now, don’t be discouraged if your website doesn’t look “perfect” when viewed on your phone… most don’t. However, if your site content is so jumbled it becomes unreadable or if your navigation is really hard to use, you’re likely missing out on business.
There are a number of ways to make a website more mobile friendly including the creation of a new site built specifically for mobile devices. These sites usually have the .mobi domain extension and are built for just this purpose.
What Makes A Mobile Website Different From The One I Have Now?
Designing a mobile website can be a real challenge because there are so many inconsistencies between the devices used to access your website.
Some, like smartphones, have very small screens and others, like iPads have larger screens that can view sites in “landscape” format.
Some can view Flash-video content, and some, like the devices from Apple, cannot.
Some have relatively fast processors, and full-featured browsers, and some have neither.
Most do not have a full-sized keyboard, if they have a keyboard at all. Because of this, it’s important your mobile site be optimized for “touch screens.” This segment represents the fastest-growing segment of mobile devices, and nearly all of the new devices in production use touch-screen technology.
In general terms, here are the main things to consider when designing your mobile site:
- Your site should have a “flexible” layout… one that expands or contracts depending on the size of the mobile screen viewing it.
- The layout should not require the user to scroll left-to-right, nor should it require them to “zoom-in” or “zoom-out” if possible.
- Your site should be easy to navigate through the user’s touch screen.
- Your contact information should be easily found, and all of your phone numbers should use the “Click-to-Call” feature.
- Each page of your mobile site should be optimized to yield a small file size. Many devices have slow processors and will “slow to a crawl” if your page sizes exceed 75kb.
- If your customers come to your business location, consider adding an interactive “Google map” or some other functionality that will make it easy for your mobile visitors to find you.
- Don’t use “Flash” for any element on your mobile site. If you do, some users simply will not be able to see it. Instead, consider either removing the “dynamic” content altogether, or simulating the effect through Javascript.
Most mobile devices are Javascript-enabled, and will properly display the content.
If your website is not very friendly to mobile devices we can easily remedy that for you by building a version of your current website that will enable you to reach the mobile market and attract new customers for your business.
Contact Us Today to make your site mobile friendly so that we can help you get more customers into your business right away!
