To be quite honest, we recommend mobile-friendly websites to virtually any business. The reason for that is because most people, including your customers of course, have a mobile phone. If you want to control how your website looks when they pull it up on their mobile device, then a mobile website is your opportunity to do just that.
Consider your customer base, and let’s say 20% of them will conduct a mobile search for your company to find a phone number, map, menu, or list of services. If your website can’t be easily accessed and viewed through a mobile device, then you risk these customers becoming frustrated at the difficulty of viewing a desktop-sized website, on a tiny mobile screen. At that point, your website is only 80% effective and limits you to the viewers who are on their home, office or laptop computers.
One Goal In Mind
The Mobile Marketing Association says “Your web site is your Supermarket, and your mobile site is your 7-Eleven.” What a great concept, and it hits the nail on the head. Don’t you go to the supermarket and the 7-Eleven with two different goals and attitudes? When you head to the supermarket, you expect to spend a longer period of time shopping, and find many products to buy. When you head to the 7-Eleven, or a “convenience store”, you’re looking for a few things in a fraction of the time.
That’s how it is with mobile search. Your customers are looking for you on their mobile device, usually with some specific question in mind which could be your phone number, location, current specials, or menu. They don’t want to see a photo gallery of past events, or a list of affiliated companies. People spend hours surfing the web on their computer, but most spend 5-10 minutes on a mobile device, because they usually aren’t just “surfing the web”. Provide them with necessary information, and suggest they visit your full website if they are interested in more information.
Content Arrangement
Because of the short timeframe of the mobile search, your site needs to quickly and easily project the information that is most important to the on-the-go visitor. Your site content could be similar to your full site, but it should be arranged in the order that is relevant to the mobile user. Your contact information should be easily accessible. Specials and directions should be noticeable. These are the usual needs mobile users have, and if you cater to that, then they will be so fond of your company simply because you made their mobile search that much easier than your competitor might have!
Design Aspects
To the mobile surfer, design is not the main focus. It can actually hinder their viewing experience because graphics increase the load time, or Flash and JavaScript aren’t even compatible with mobile devices. A desktop site viewed on a mobile device, requires zooming in, zooming out, side scrolling, etc. A mobile site should be designed to have the content as the main focus, and provide helpful information immediately. Design is just an added bonus to make the site more attractive and coordinated with your existing branding. We certainly suggest that you have it customized and branded for your company, but keep the graphics to a minimum compared to a desktop site.
Ready or Not?
If you’re ready for a mobile website for your company, let us know and we can quickly develop a user-friendly mobile version to have your customers easily finding the information they’re searching for.
If you’re not ready just yet, we suggest you spend some time looking around for information about the use of mobile devices for internet searches, and maybe the importance will jump out at you after seeing some statistics. It isn’t always easy for someone to search on a computer, but most people have access to a mobile phone at all times. The world is turning mobile, and before long, who knows? Maybe mobile websites will overtake conventional websites!
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