How to Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

With the huge popularity of devices such as smartphones and tablets around the world, mobile is now the preferred way many people get online. Hence, it is essential that your small business has a mobile-friendly site to make it easy for people to find you.

Industry forecasts predict that there will be 1.7 billion mobile internet users by this year. And it’s a pretty safe bet that at least a few of them are visiting your site, and seeing it on a screen that takes up just a few inches.

So, having said all that, do you know what your website looks like on a mobile phone? Just because you can see your site on a smartphone doesn’t mean that it’s mobile-friendly. Do you have to pinch and zoom to read what’s on screen? Can you easily click to get to where you want to go without hitting the wrong link?

Answers to questions like these can help determine if the people visiting your website on mobile devices can easily complete what they intend to do, such as making a purchase or contacting you.

Why is a Mobile Strategy Important?

Your business needs to be where your customers are. And, increasingly, they’re on mobile devices. A recent study found that 40 percent of users have clicked over to a competitor’s site after having a bad mobile experience. So it’s critical that you make a good mobile impression.

A good mobile site can be great for business. Mobile-friendly sites are purposely made for the small screen and aren’t just shrunken down versions of your regular website. Simplicity is also key, since good mobile sites are quick, simple to navigate, easy to read, have large buttons, and prioritise key information.

In addition, mobile-optimised sites take advantage of the natural capabilities of smartphones and other mobile devices. Features like click-to-call, maps, and location information are perfect for mobile, and are common best practices for mobile-friendly sites. These features help connect customers directly to your business and drive more calls and traffic to your store.

How to go Mobile?

1. Before you go mobile, make sure your site is mobile compliant. You need the pages to load properly in mobile devices.
2. Create a mobile sitemap so the search engines can index your pages for mobile browsers.
3. Use few words and small graphics. People don't read much on mobiles and they want the data to come quickly.
4. Make sure you give readers the choice of viewing the standard site as well.
5. Make sure you offer readers clear and distinct ways to get to your most important content.
6. When your site is being viewed on a much smaller screen, make sure you have compelling headlines that let the reader know she’s going to have a great experience reading this content.
7. Provide clear content that gets right to the point also assures readers can digest your material on their mobile devices, even while they’re distracted and busy.
8. Images are a great way to get a point across or break up text, but just try to imagine someone reading your content on a really slow connection with a tiny little screen.
9. All arguments aside about the relevance of Flash, it is generally a safe bet that not all mobile devices will be able serve up either of these technologies. Even if they do, it tends to be an extra step or two to actually view the content.
10. Keep in mind the whitespace around paragraphs and words. If your content is so cramped that it makes readers physically uncomfortable, they might not hang out for very long.

If you are using a smartphone based on Windows Phone 8 and would want to check up your websites stats on the go, the Phonealytics Free is the right place to start. With Phonealytics you get all the important traffic stats for your website available in your pocket. Phonealytics focuses on providing information at a glance and in line with your phones theme.

Download Your Free Website Analytics Tool: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/phonealytics-free/21baf298-210a-4fe1-9a89-6314ae62151f

Why Customers Want Mobile-Friendly Websites

The development of your mobile site should be determined by the kinds of products and services your business provides. Since mobile devices sport relatively small screens and a different way of interacting with page content, simply shrinking your text into the device’s screen won’t give customers that warm and fuzzy feeling about your site.

Customers want to know if you’re open, how to contact you, and where to get more information about your products. It also helps if they can purchase your products without being asked to download an application or being redirected to a non mobile-friendly e-commerce site. You’re more likely to complete a sale if you empower your customer to do so on-the-go, perhaps right after seeing a relevant, engaging advertisement for your best product.

Is Your Site Mobile Friendly? Why Your Website Should Be Mobile-Friendly

Take a look around on any subway, in any airport, or even around the meeting table at work and you’re bound to find a number of individuals glued to their smartphones. As providers improve their networks and hardware giants continue to push out new devices, customers are browsing the web more from their smartphones and tablets rather than from traditional computers. While these devices sport full web browsers, it is becoming important for businesses to tailor this experience to their mobile users.

In late 2012, Google conducted an independent survey titled “What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today.” Of the 1,088 smartphone users that were surveyed, about 67 percent indicated they would be more likely to purchase a product or service from a business that built a mobile-friendly website. Couple that with the fact that 61 percent of users also said they’d leave a site that’s not optimized for mobile and it’s clear that having a mobile-friendly site is more important than ever.

Top 5 Mobile SEO Tips For M-commerce & Retail

1: Make Pages Accessible To Mobile Searchers:

This tip may seem like a no-brainer in a world where at least 25% of all search traffic comes from mobile devices and 90% of consumers use multiple screens sequentially before making a conversion; but unfortunately, many have still failed to get with the program.

In Q2 2011, PureOxygen Mobile did a study of the top 75 retail brands in the 2012 IR 300 and found that only 19% of them served mobile content to smartphones. Even worse — more than 30% of them redirected all mobile traffic to the site’s home page.

You can do better. Yes, providing unique mobile content can be a key differentiation for your business (depending on your users); but, you have to crawl before you can walk.

Serving mobile users the same information and services as those using desktop computers or tablet devices (a concept known as “One Web“) is important; it creates a consistent brand message and ensures that searchers who find a page on your site will be able to find some equivalent version of that page on a mobile device.

Responsive Web design and adaptive content are popular solutions, but they are not the only ones. Platforms like Moovweb, for example, unify content across all versions of a site, while allowing for a more customized mobile experience.

Apps have seen a resurgence in popularity recently (see Flurry and Nielsen’s study on time spent in apps); but, if you don’t have an accessible mobile site first, then you’re not going to be visible in Google search for most queries. Having an app is great, but not at the cost of sacrificing valuable mobile Web traffic.

If you’re a retailer, and you still serve desktop pages to mobile users or only have a mobile app, you may not be in business for long. Remember, we live in a world where more than 25% of total search traffic comes from mobile devices, and mobile devices are one of many that consumers use before making a conversion.

2: Be Careful When Selecting Mobile Platforms:

Long-time readers of my column should know that I don’t often recommend the platforms that so many large brands select to make their content mobile-friendly. These platforms are often cheap, and you get what you pay for. (See the problems Staples and Mercedes had with their mobile sites, for example.)

Many of these platforms create duplicate content and/or have major search usability issues that prevent them from being indexed in search results.

Some platforms are better than others, of course. When looking for a partner to help take your site mobile, make sure they can answer “yes” to the following questions. If they can’t, look elsewhere:

Does your platform add tracking parameters to the URL or host the site in two places, which might create duplicate content issues?

If dynamic serving is used, can you serve the vary HTTP header to Googlebot? And if mobile URLs are used, can you implement switchboard tags with the platform?

Does the platform allow you to make content changes for each device, based on keyword research?

3: Foreground Local Information If Applicable:

Not all m-commerce providers have a local presence; but, if you do, you should know that mobile searchers often want information on local stores.

Retail searchers are more likely to be looking for local information, according to Google, who said the single most important retail task for mobile users is getting directions to or operating hours for a local store.

In fact, if we look at a large retailer like Sports Authority — which I think does a good job of aligning search intent with content — you can see that the searches with a high mobile volume are largely location searches. to know more about  Mobile SEO Strategies