Mobile Web Sites - Without one your business may suffer

Sep 5
14:24

2012

Graham J McLusky

Graham J McLusky

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If you are on the web and have a presence already, you honestly should be thinking about getting a mobile site, otherwise you will be left behind in the hurry to stay in line with the advances of technology. Your competition will win the day if they have Mobile Sites... and you do not. It's that simple! Mobile is here to stay and is rapidly becoming the most popular method of browsing and making purchases.

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Recent research indicates that around 40 percent or so of the top 100 brands in the UK have mobilised websites in operation,Mobile Web Sites - Without one your business may suffer Articles promoting their product. This means that 55 percent don't. This of course is not just larger brands but a lot of web sites for smaller businesses, organisations, individuals & sole traders, tradespeople and the like. Due to the fact that Smart Phones and Tablets have far exceeded the sales of the humble PC, over 45 percent of the traffic on the internet is due to mobile devices being used every day. Around 4 out of 5 mobile device owners browse, shop, communicate, socially network etc using their mobile devices. There are massive proportion of these are being used on the internet, daily.

Having said all this, we now need to reflect on how we are to deliver to this mobile active marketplace. There is a massive difference between the design methods of a regular web site and a mobile web site. Attempt looking at a non-mobile web site on an Iphone for instance; you are squinting and zooming in and out to look for what you need... and you may not find it because you become bored looking! What works well on the PC Screen (or Mac) hardly works out well on a mobile device. We need to look at this from a different angle and turn web design on it's head and start again!

We have to be mindful of the large number of mobile devices which are on the market and in common everyday use. We also need to be mindful of that in order to make the user experience a great one, we need to take out a lot of the information, reduce the content and leave the bare bones for all to see. This is a challenge sometimes but it makes you really think about what is really necessary. Only the most relevant information can be shown.

The mobile site must stay focused and not move away from the necessary and relevant. The visitor needs to be able to read the site easily and it must load quickly. This maintains the attention of the visitor and keeps them with you, rather than having them navigate away to someone else's site.

You don't need a complex mobile site. Many people, perhaps local tradespeople and suppliers have just a single page mobile web site with a "tap to call button" and email link. Some firms will have multi page mobile sites with content pages, contact forms, images and product details etc.