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BizReport : Mobile Marketing : September 18, 2008

Is your website mobile-friendly?

Have you checked out what your website looks like on a mobile device? No? Perhaps you should before consumers start browsing the malls for their holiday shopping, mobile device in hand.

by Helen Leggatt

By using a mobile emulator it is possible to view your website as it would be seen by someone using a mobile device. Mobile-unfriendly websites are often rendered useless when viewed on a tiny screen and are guaranteed to turn customers away.

With many consumers checking up on prices using their mobiles while browsing stores, in some cases even purchasing online while strolling the mall, it’s imperative that you make a good first impression.

However, don’t simply register a .mobi domain, transfer your Internet site format and leave it at that. Mobile phone users are viewing your website on totally different screens and in a wide variety of situations. Instead of browsing, mobile users are looking for specific information which, due to bandwidth and cost issues, should be presented with brevity and directness.

Get the content balance right – not too minimal, not too expansive. Think about the sort of information your mobile customers might want – directions, search, contact information, latest news, business hours? A rudimentary mobile site could consist of just four or five such information pages only. By the same token, don’t go as minimal as to render the site useless.

Where possible, minimize the need for the mobile user to type. Use buttons – big buttons, says Pierre Far of Socialalerter.com, via Search Engine People. “On a small screen, if you have a link or a button or any other important page element you want your users to be able to interact with, make it big,” writes Far. Why? Because, he continues, “Mobile phone users don’t want to be caught dead using a stylus if we have a touch screen. What do we do instead? Why use our big grubby fingers.”

Companies across many industries are using mobile websites to keep their products and services at the fingertips of consumers wherever they roam, and it’s not long before they’ll be roaming the stores looking for holiday gifts.

Some good examples of mobile-friendly sites to investigate are:

Tags: mobile Internet, mobile marketing, mobile phone, mobile website

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Hi, Great to see how mobile continues to become more and more important to build a profile and generate awareness of a product, service, and more. It's a new media marketeers dream! And continuing on with the theme of mobile sites, I just wanted to point out that if anyone has a blog, it takes just one minute to make the entire blog mobile friendly using a service called Mippin Mobilizer. It offers branding customisation tools, advertising revenue, and aone of the largest mobile audiences in the UK and USA who are already checking previously mobilized content on their phones. This is because the Mippin Mobilized blog ultimately becomes part of a much wider community of content, news, shopping and product reviews, and much more at the mobile site http://mippin.com (on a mobile browser.) Take a look at Mippin Mobilizer on PC first at: www.mippin.com/Mobilizer to see how great a blog can look in our quick demo. Plus you'll find some very neat marketing tricks like free mobile widgets for websites, and more.

Posted by: Justin Baker on September 30, 2008 13:02

Most business dont have wapsites or mobile websites

Posted by: Stop N Text on May 2, 2009 17:45

Most businesses dont have wapsites or mobile websites

Posted by: Stop N Text on May 2, 2009 17:46