Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Devices
Recently, I’ve been surprised to find that some of our customers are still uncertain about the value of optimizing their website for mobile.
It’s been a trend for a few years now. But let me throw down two statistics to explain why it’s increasingly important.
- Today, 15 to 30% of all searches are done on mobile devices.
- By the end of 2011, 50% of Americans will have a smart phone.
In other words, a ton of people are already trying to search for you via mobile. Those numbers are only going to increase. And before your website can function effectively as a mobile website, it must be made compatible with mobile devices.
Atomic can accomplish this task for you, a lot more quickly than you might think. Ready to optimize your site for mobile? Here are a few points to keep in mind.
- Simplify. Make the layout simple. Complex graphics and unconventional navigation are lost on mobile users. What are the few critical pieces of information your customers need? Include that. Forget about everything else.
- Resize. Make sure navigation links and buttons are large and easy to find. Your thumb isn’t as accurate as your mouse.
- Prioritize. What content do you want your visitors to read? Make that the first thing they read. Users are much less likely to browse on mobile devices. They want to find the information they’re looking for immediately.
- Technify. You’re creating a mobile site. So maximize the capabilities of mobile devices with features like “Click to Call.” Click-to-call lets a user press your phone number and instantly place a call —rather than having to exit their browser function, call up the phone function, and enter your number manually.
- Streamline. Whether your goal is to increase phone calls or sales, make this task as simple as possible. If you want a phone call, break the process into three quick steps: provide a brief description of services or why a customer should call, offer an incentive for calling, then show the phone number (using click-to-call). If you want a sale? Provide a brief description of the product or service, let your user click to the product page(s), and then click again to checkout.
If you want to see the difference between an optimized and non-optimized site, compare Home Depot vs. Menards, or Smashburger vs. Applebees. The difference in usability is huge.
So ask yourself: Which way do you want your site to look?
Mobilizing Your Organization’s Web Presence
The idea that you need a PC to browse online is nearly as old fashioned as, well, the Old Fashioned. Now more than ever, people use their mobile devices to do everything—from finding the recipe for a classic cocktail, to ordering repair parts online, to writing cell phone novels.
What’s more, U.S. sales of AT&T-based iPhones are expected to reach 21.3 million by 2011. With those numbers in mind, making your content mobile-accessible seems less of an option and more of an essential, ongoing consideration.
At Atomic Interactive, we help customers adapt their web content to the mobile world in a variety of ways:
- Create an application that has value to your audience. Coming up with a concept for your application is a great place to get started. Ask yourself a few questions: “What do my clients want?” “What struggles are they having?” “Is there something fun I can share with my customers to get them excited about my product or service?” We can guide you every step of the way from concept to completion of your application.
- Fitting your site to its users. With mobile-formatted websites, we use code to sniff out your clients’ browser preferences based on the device they use to find you—whether it’s an iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, or mini Netbook. Your content is then displayed in an easy-to-read, mobile-size format, with the most important information up front.
- Using the latest technology. Since websites are much easier to update than applications, we’re using the latest web-development technology, such as Ajax, HTML5, and CSS3, to make functionality extremely user friendly, device-specific, and even downright sexy. We know how to optimize graphics to display well on both large and small screens, for example—so we don’t shortchange traditional users or overwhelm mobile users.
- Helping you navigate the “app” universe. Apps—the quirky, convenient applications that present information in personalized ways to mobile device users—are a great way to get multi-channel exposure (e.g., at the iTunes Appstore or the Android Market).
But how do you know which options to invest in, and whether they’ll attract customers? Our experts can help you review the online marketplace and make sure that a mobile application adds value to your brand and is useful for your customers. After all, even if you have a great app, if it’s not properly marketed, your target audience may not know it’s available.
We build sites and applications using clean code that prevent disruptions that can send mobile users running to the virtual competition. We also help prioritize your information with the mobile user’s briefer browsing habits in mind. And we always test our work from the most popular mobile platforms to be sure the content views correctly.
Want to learn more about maximizing your Web presence? Use your mobile device to find us online, send us an e-mail, or ring us up the old-fashioned way.