Is Your Website Mobile Friendly? 4 Steps to Building an Effective Mobile Site Allison Hester
The professional contract cleaners online resource!
Introduction Is your website mobile friendly? Can customers find you on their phones? If not, you are likely missing out on a valuable marketing tool, and one that can be fairly easily rectified by designing a mobile-friendly site. Studies show that mobile devices - i.e., phones with some sort of web-browsing capabilities - outnumber desktop computers four to one. Internationally, mobile devices outnumber PCs and TVs combined. The phone is quickly becoming the most commonly used method for searching the web. However, phones generally are limited in their web-browsing capabilities. With a mobile device, customers can search for contract-cleaning companies any time, anywhere. That’s a good thing‌if your site is mobile ready.
Step 1: Recognize the Challenges Mobile devices are not desktops, and therefore present a number of web browsing challenges. These include: • Small screens. Most phones allow for 20 to 25 characters per line, and five to seven lines of visible text. There is also a limit of 90 to 320 pixels both horizontally and vertically. Scrolling is also an issue. • Limited Input Capabilities: Entering text is time consuming. • Limited Processor Power and Memory. • Limited Bandwidth. • Limited Color Support. In other words, too much information and your site won’t load.
Step 2: Understand the Basic Technical Requirements Mobile sites use a different markup language called XHTML MP. This is a very stripped-down version of the language used for building websites, which means it is very limited in what can be done. You don’t need to know how to write XHTML MP code, but when creating your site for mobile use, keep these things in mind: • Limit the depth. The number of pages “in” from the home page that a user can go should be limited to two or three levels.
• Reduce your page length - significantly. • Use clickable interactivity such as email forms, live chat, SMS alerts, etc. A “call now” button that automatically connects the customer is a smart feature. • Limit or even remove images and fancy fonts. • Reduce large graphics to smaller sizes. • Avoid using background images, as they can make the site difficult to read. • Avoid Flash elements. (Most mobile devices cannot run flash) • Avoid Javascript.
Step 3: Test Your Current Desktop Website To know what your current website looks like on a mobile device, you need to test it. Fortunately, there are websites that can test your mobile user friendliness for free. • http://instantmobilizer.com/test-your-site.php will look up your current site and show you what it looks like on a mobile device. • http://ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN • http://validator.w3.org/mobile/
Step 4: Select a Mobile Site Building Option Basically, you can go one of three routes when converting your website to a mobile-friendly option: 1. Use plugins. Some website development programs, such as WordPress, have plugins to help make your site mobile friendly. However, sometimes these can focus more on the theme (look) than the content. You need to make sure it condenses your key information into an easy-tonavigate menu on a mobile device. You also want it to look good. 2. Use a service such as gomobi.com to convert your current site into a mobile site. Again, if you have a lot of information on your site, this may not be the way you want to go. 3. Build a separate mobile site. This is actually relatively easy to do, particularly if you plan to keep your site static. However, you just have to remember to go in a make appropriate changes to your mobile site as well as your regular website. There are websites that can help you build a mobile site for free. The one I tested was www.ubik.com but there are others out there, free and paid. To learn how the process worked, I actually created a site on ubik.com for eClean Magazine (www.eclean-magazine.ubik.net) Here are the steps: 1. Select a template.
2. Choose which types of pages you want to use. You will need to plan out your site ahead of time. 3. Hit “Create Site.” Now you will see three columns. On the left are the templates. The middle has the area where you customize your information. The right column shows what the information/page will look like on different types of mobile devices. (Note: Hit the “Show Mobile Preview” link to preview different devices.” 4. To edit your pages, choose a template from your left column. This will make that section show up in your middle, editable column. Edit your content as desired. If you need more specific information on how to do this, there is a video on the main page (www.ubik.com) to show you more. 5. Publish your site when it’s finished. Be sure to post your mobile site’s address on your actual website, and advertise it on your site as well.
Things to Remember • Mobile is not a fad. • Your site needs to work: make sure it loads quickly, represents efficiently, and doesn’t cause handsets to crash. • Your site should add value, giving your customers what they need. • Your site should focus. Every item on the site should provide value. Otherwise, eliminate it.