You might have built a killer inbound marketing strategy for your business and be attracting many new customers to your website as a result, but if mobile users can’t access your site on-the-go, you could be missing out on valuable business.
How are you supposed to know if your website can be seen on a mobile device? Simple. Just whip out your smartphone and type in your URL – if you can’t read it clearly, then you have some work to do.
Why is a mobile optimised site an important aspect of any inbound marketing strategy? Well, today 12 percent of Australian’s search for products and services online via their mobile devices, smartphones, iPhones and iPads. If your website is illegible, you’re simply missing out on this business. And this 12 percent figure is on the rise – in Europe 55 percent of people now access the internet through their smartphones. You don’t need me to spell out how many people that amounts to!
You don’t need to be a computer whizz to learn how to use apps. My three year old niece can navigate an iPhone to get to the games and images she wants, while my mother is having a great time buying and selling things on eBay through her iPad – we really are in a new world.
So, here are two very simple ways you can make your website mobile friendly:
1. Set up a mobile re-direct:
This is where a line of code is positioned on the homepage of your website to figure out the size of the visitor’s browser screen. Based on the size of the screen then the visitor is directed to the mobile site, which is a different version of your website or they stay where they are.
2. Use mobile CSS:
This enables you to change the way your website is displayed and organised on mobile devices.
Before you go ahead with either of these options you need to filter out some of the information that’s less important from your full website to suit the mobile browser. Generally people searching through their mobile devices are looking for specific details about your business, like phone numbers, location and opening hours – so it’s a good idea to focus on this information, rather than getting bogged down with other less relevant details. If your customers want to browse through your products on their mobile, build this capability in as a priority.
Mobile optimisation doesn’t need to be a big, time consuming job, it just takes a little forward planning, thought and, of course, some testing!
