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How mobile is your website

Written by: Rob Lawson

Article Overview: The use of mobile phones to access the internet is no longer just a trend for early adopters. This phenomenon has now gained a critical mass, and businesses wishing to market on the web, need to take the needs of mobile internet users into account when designing their site.

How mobile is your website

If you’re like half the top 20 top web sites ranked by Nielsen Online then your answer may well be: ‘What the … ?’ When mobile software provider Bango conducted a recent survey, results showed that a remarkable number of companies are neither optimizing their sites for mobile, nor tracking how much mobile-generated traffic they get.

Current estimations from Nielsen Mobile put mobile internet penetration at 15.6% in the USA, 12.9% in the UK and 11.9% in Italy. This is described as having reached a level of critical mass. With figures like these businesses can ill afford to be making websites that are compromised when viewed on mobile phones.

Do mobile internet users behave differently from PC users?

The most significant difference in this regard is that mobile users visit fewer sites than PC users. They are still searching (40% state that they find sites via search engines, while 22% type in a URL directly) but they are less likely to visit numerous sites related to a single search. Nielson Online reports that the average PC user visits 100 domain sites each month while mobile users average only 6.4. This means there is good opportunity for your site to be found by a mobile searcher, and stresses the importance of making sure it is optimized for mobile.

The pitfalls and perks of mobile internet

Most frustration around mobile internet relates to network dissatisfaction and slow data transfer speed. Similar to the transition from dial-up to broadband with PC internet use, the evolution of 3G (third generation) networks are bringing vast improvements to consumer experiences of mobile internet.

Full exploitation of the benefits of mobile internet is just starting to be imagined. Predictions indicate positive relationships between users and businesses who wish to tap the mobile market. Mobile internet users are open to mobile advertising and are quite savvy when it comes to the realities of paying for the technology. 23% of US mobile data users expect to see an increase in advertising and are open to this as a way of subsidizing the cost of their mobile internet use.

At this year’s FOWA (futures of web applications) Expo, Stefan Fountain from Soocial delivered a presentation about the future of mobile internet. He predicts a shift away from the emphasis on devices (phones vs PCs vs PDAs) and towards actions and applications. Citing a fridge that knows when and what food to order and restock, he describes a world where ‘internet’ will become akin to ‘electricity’. It will be ubiquitous, flexible in delivery and we will only really notice it when it is absent.

What this means for businesses is a prompt to start thinking about how your service might be flexibly delivered via mobile internet. Making sure your website is optimized for mobile phones is one thing, but imaging how your product might interact in a mobile way with people’s every day lives is the next big conceptual leap.

A checklist for happy mobile internet translation

In the meantime, there are a few things to consider when designing your site, or communicating with your web designer. It is worth referring to a resource regarding mobile web best practices to ensure your site is well optimized for mobile internet use.

On a practical level, keep in mind that simple site structures with clear labels, limited use of Flash or other custom applications, images in accessible forms such as jpeg or gif, optimized graphics for quick download, and keeping maximum page size under 20 kb will help make your site user friendly across a range of mobiles. You should also submit your mobile site map to Google.

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  Significance of Mobile-Friendly Website Design
  Mobile Small Biz Opportunities
  Mobile Web Design

Article Tags: consumer experiences, critical mass, data users, estimations, generation networks, internet penetration, internet use, mobile advertising, mobile data, mobile internet users, mobile market, mobile software, mobile users, pc internet, pc users, remarkable number, search engines, software provider, top web sites, transfer speed



Related Forum Posts
Mobile Internet Viewing - A few years ago (2001 - 2002) there was a lot of talk about creating websites for mobile phones using technology called WAP which I considered to learn but never got around to it. I don't believe you should even consider creating an optimised website for mobile viewing at the moment unless you are offering ring tone downloads or something for use directly on a mobile phone. Another exception is if your target market uses mobile internet but again this would only be for ringtone, theme downloads etc because I know most people would not use their mobile phone for book reviews or stories for example.
Mobile Marketing - Mobile marketing is a huge growth opportunity for local businesses. More and more people are carrying smartphones that have always-on internet connections, and they're using them to find local businesses when they're on the go.There are very few businesses that approach mobile marketing correctly, however. Most companies have either no "mobile" version of their website, or if they do it's really just a smaller version of the same site. The latter is a little better option, but it's still not very effective. As far as the first problem - having no mobile-specific version of your website - this makes it extremely likely that someone searching for more information will simply leave the page and look for another site that's friendlier. Having a mobile-friendly version of your websites is a better option so that it can be easier to read. After all, what are people looking for when they look up a business on their mobile phone? 99% of the time, they're looking for one of two things - a phone number or an address. They don't want to read the website or anything else; they're just trying to either call or get to the right location. If someone searches for a local business on their smartphone, and winds up on a webpage, don't you think the chances are much better that they're going to actually call and/or visit as a result? And that's not all you can do with mobile websites. Most of today's smartphones have various other functions that can be integrated into a mobile site. Many smartphones have GPS functions built right in. What if you could include GPS coordinates on your website so all your potential customer had to do was click on the link and it would open their GPS and give them exact directions to get from wherever they are to your location? Or how about including all that contact information on your website so that customer could click another link and automatically have it all loaded into their phone's address book? Don't you think they'd be a lot more likely to make multiple visits to your business if the details were all loaded in their phone whenever they needed your products or services? For that reason greater chance of visiting your site is possible.
Re: The Mobile Marketing - Now days trend has been changed because most number of people used their mobile phones for their daily activities. So if we think to market our business online, we should also create the mobile version of the website. Mobile marketing can raise and dominate the business over the local area instantly.
Re: The Mobile Marketing - With the advent of smart phones and epads, every business man should be preparing to use mobile marketing. Mobile devices are more than laptops and pcs combine. Every Tom, Dick and their sister Harriet are having mobile devices. Not every one has laptop.
Re: What's the best anti-virus/spyware software? - I just read an interview today with Kaspersky, the Kasperky himself. I hope I'm spelling his name right. The interview was about the company new antivirus, of course, but he was talking about the new ways to insert harmful viruses to your computers and mobile. 1- SMS, it is not new, but the phenomena is increasing with the development of mobile phone with OS, and of course the mobile companies that ignore this problem. 2- Social networks, twitter, facebook, etc, with one tiny message you can infect 100,000 computers, because the lack of security and "thanks" to people who approve everyone. 3- On 3rd party softwares, for example FireFox Add-ons, or other programs that connect the internet, the most favorite are Flash and Quicktime.


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