Are You Mobile? Why Your Company Needs a Mobile Friendly Website

If you think about it, your company’s website is an extension of your business. What message is it conveying to the visitors? Is it easy to navigate through? How are people accessing your website? It is important as a business owner to answer all of these questions and have a clear idea of how your website will interact with your clients.

In today’s fast paced world, you need to stay current on how people are accessing information. In a study done by comScore, they reported that the, “number of U.S. mobile phone users who access their device daily for mobile Internet access more than doubled from 10.8 million in January 2008 to 22.4 million in January 2009.”

On that same note, 2009 brought, “a 600% growth in traffic to mobile websites,” according to Bango a mobile payments and analytics specialist. It seems the number of people accessing the Internet via a cell phone is growing tremendously every year—and that is something every business owner should take into account. Below are some factors to go over before making the leap into the mobile web scene.

Screen Size
There is a dramatic difference in screen size from a computer screen and a cell phone. For this reason it is wise to cut all “fluff” from your homepage. Keeping information concise will help streamline your key points and help users get a better idea on what your company can do for them.

If you have a cell phone where you can access the Internet, browse some websites and see what you like and dislike about them. Get a feel on what works and what doesn’t work—see how you can make your website work on these tiny screens.

Optimize your Current Site or Create New Site
When going the mobile route, there are two options, optimizing your current site or creating a new site just for mobile browsing. Both have pros and cons and you should weigh each option and decide what is best for your company. One point to keep in the back of your head is if you do decide to optimize your current site, you need to be aware that search results on mobile devices use a different data set than web browsers do.

If you use wordpress.org for your website and aren’t too familiar with html, CSS, and don’t have an in-house web designer, WPtouch is a great plugin for your site. This application, “allows you to customize many aspects of its [your websites] appearance, and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to your iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini mobile, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm visitors without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme.”

If you do have a web designer on hand, one option to look into is Mobify. This application offers a great free service as well as a paid plan for more available features. Mobify will generate a real-time mobile version of your website and optimize images, styles and advertising for the small screen.

These are just two of many applications out there, so do some research before deciding on what is the best fit for your company. A quick search on Google can open the door to many different ways to help you better optimize your current site or help you make your current website mobile friendly.

In the end it is up to you what will be best for your company and the leap into mobile web. Doing research will help tremendously, and help your company stay current on how people are accessing their information.