Most businesses these days are reliant, to some degree, on attracting sales via the internet. Whether it’s social media, search engine optimization (SEO), video marketing, or another online method, the internet is a crucial component for small businesses to connect with their local consumers. However, many companies are missing out on one crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to effectively marketing their businesses: A mobile-friendly website.
Just take a look around at your customers. Take a look around while walking down the street. Take a look around your own household. One thing that almost everyone has in common today is that we cannot function without our mobile devices.
The current sales boom in smart phones and tablets means that more and more people are accessing the internet via a mobile device every day. And in order for small local businesses to be able to compete with the big online businesses, they need to have a good mobile web presence that clearly directs people to their products, services and location.
A strong, profitable website structure is vital if you want to convert your website visitors into revenue. However, if your website does not have a mobile-friendly version, you are missing out on a large percentage of actual visitors to your website.
Because of the way that smart phones and tablets display web pages, a website that looks great on a desktop may be hard to navigate and difficult to read on a mobile device.
Today’s search engines are designed to be more device-specific in their results pages. This means a website that is not mobile-optimized may not even appear on the results pages for mobile internet users.
However, many business owners fail to see the impact this could have on their ability to profit in these tough economic times. Overlooking this powerful form of marketing is a huge mistake.
Designing a website for your business that is geared towards mobile users is a simple process. Mobile-friendly pages are often just a simpler version of a standard page, so they do not require as much content as a normal website.
In fact, your mobile website can easily be created with the content on your current website. But the “layout of the content” and the “amount of content” must be appropriate in order to have a flawless mobile website that your customers will love.
Tips for Creating a Mobile-Friendly Version of Your Website
- The first thing to consider when designing a mobile version of your website is the screen size. Simply having your online content formatted to display well on handheld devices can improve the mobile traffic to your website. So don’t overcrowd your mobile website with unnecessary information, bells and whistles.
- Due to the fact that local businesses heavily rely on foot traffic from their local area, be sure to make your phone number and location clearly visible on your mobile website’s home. Mobile internet users are “on the go” and are usually looking to call you up or come by – that’s it. So make it super easy for them to call or come by.
- As great as all of the graphics on your standard site may be, they are just going to decrease the speed at which pages display on small mobile devices. It is best to keep them to a minimum or to dispose of them altogether when building your mobile-optimized site. This includes page elements like headers, which won’t display on mobile devices as they were
- Mobile devices tend to break up long pages of content into smaller, broken down pages of content. So it is best to circumvent this by editing your content to display in smaller, screen-sized
- Take control over how your pages display entirely. Put yourself in your mobile customers’ shoes and take a look at each of your mobile web pages. Is it easy for you to access the information your mobile users will need while on the go?
- When you have trimmed your mobile website down to a reasonable presentation, it is a good idea to take a look at it on a number of different mobile devices to see if the website has any
- Once you have configured your web page to display well on mobile devices, the next step is to make sure that it gets indexed in the mobile search engines so that your customers can easily find
- Most searches from mobile devices are fifteen letters or less, so it is necessary for your mobile-configured pages to use shorter keywords. This is because you have to keep your mobile content to a workable size. So the more accurate the keywords are, the more likely your mobile customers will find what they are looking for; which could result in even more sales your
- To make sure that your page is visible to the crawlers, submit your mobile site map to the search engines to give the spiderbots a head start on the job of indexing your
Running a mobile website in tandem to your established, standard website essentially doubles your web presence. Being able to do this by using the same amount of content, or less, can be extremely profitable for your business.
When consumers run into websites that are difficult to view on their mobile devices, they quickly exit them and move on to one of their competitors’ sites. However, when they find dependable, easy-loading websites that they can access while conducting business via their mobile devices, they are likely to come back time and time again.
Due to the massive increases in mobile internet usage, your mobile site could eventually be even more successful than your standard site. It’s time for your business to develop a solid plan that will help you connect with your mobile audience and capitalize on the enormous growth of mobile technology.
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