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Web : Small Screen Star

Six steps to achieve your best mobile website

December 2010 By Matthew Poepsel
Can Your Website Be Your Mobile Website?

If your business does not utilize a specific mobile website or mobile applications, there are a few techniques you can use to optimize your main website for mobile visitors and devices:

→ Keep server connections to a minimum: While full desktop browsers can handle a large number of parallel connections to Web servers with relative efficiency, mobile browsers benefit from sites that create fewer connections. Use as few hosts as possible to keep the number of connections down.

→ Streamline text files and images: Every byte counts on the mobile Web. Reduce the size of text files by eliminating whitespace, for example, and reduce the file sizes of images. The smaller device profile often can’t handle excess information contained in bloated images.

→ Use detection logic: As with mobile websites, identify traffic from specific devices and send site content selectively, based on the data volumes and content types that various devices can support.


With sales of Web-enabled smartphones exploding worldwide— experts from RBC Capital Markets expect smartphone sales to eclipse worldwide PC sales by the end of 2011—marketers are looking for ways to tap the full reach and revenue potential of the mobile Web. Delivering rich and engaging mobile websites that offer the ease-of-use and convenience users are accustomed to on desktop computers is a key component in successful mobile strategies.

Use of the mobile Web as a commerce platform has grown significantly in recent years, as well. Almost half of all Web-enabled phone owners make purchases from their devices. And beyond purchasing, shoppers use mobile devices to augment the decision-making process while they're perusing store aisles—for example, reading reviews, comparing products and prices, and determining if a particular product is in stock.

By virtue of this convenience, the mobile Web offers marketers opportunities to engage and connect with customers right at the point of sale. Smart marketers who are eager to deliver the highest-quality, most compelling mobile website experiences can leverage the following best practices to set their mobile websites apart from those of the competition:

1. Determine Your Customer's Needs and Expectations
Marketers must first determine how they can best serve their mobile website customers. Options include streamlining conventional Internet sites, delivering a mobile-optimized site, or offering native mobile applications. Companies that use simple Web designs without a lot of large photos or rich media may be able to let mobile users interact with their conventional websites (for more on this option, see sidebar). But that's not often the case today. Unless your site is incredibly simple, you may be better off developing a mobile-optimized version of the site designed for viewing on the small screen.

For instance, mobile websites may be better off offering just a few category selections which take users to the most popular buying areas, or using a lot of links to limit the amount of information that must be loaded per page. Custom mobile apps are also an option, but marketers should consider the demands they put on the customer, such as having to download and install the app. This can create a barrier to entry, because not every customer is willing to devote the time—and the data, for those who don't have an unlimited plan—to download the app in order to access your wares on a mobile device.

 

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FROM THE BOOKSTORE

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“Blanchard is demanding. He won’t allow you to flip through this book, nod your head, and leave. If you’re in, you’re going to have to invest to get your rewards.”
--Chris Brogan, president of Human Business Works

“Social media isn’t inexpensive; it’s different expensive. The human effort required to do


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A guide to prospecting, lead generation, building an Opt-in database, tracking, social media integration, deliverability, mining content and balanced creative. While email marketing has reached maturity, there’s still plenty of life in this channel — if used wisely.

That’s the focus of this new guide to email



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