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Why you need a mobile version of your website

23 February 2012

Firstly why do you have a web site? To garner more traffic and show off your wares. These may be products or services. Once your users have found you, you want them to make a decision and do something. This activity may be to buy, subscribe to a newsletter, tell a friend, make a booking etc.

Now, what is a mobile version of your site? Basically, this means making your website useful for mobile users, be it on a mobile smart phone, iPad or other tablet. Your mobile users will be able to see everything that is important on your site and be able to act as you wish them to.

Before you scoff at people doing business on their phones, consider this: when you walked out the door this morning you picked up your keys, wallet and mobile, or your handbag which had keys, wallet, makeup, tissues… and mobile phone. In any one room of business people, or any gathering of Baby Boomers, Gen X or Y, you would have a difficult time finding a person who does not carry a mobile phone. Based on the ubiquitous nature of the mobile phone, by far more used than newspapers, TV, radio or any other mainstream mass media, you need to have a web site which can be utilised by these devices.

Whilst every mobile phone is not web enabled, the latest research shows that 37% of Australians have a smartphone (Source: The Mobile Movement Study, Google/Ipsos OTX MediaCT, Apr 2011), which is # 2 worldwide for smart phone penetration (Singapore is #1).

This very same research established that there was a 220% year on year increase in retail queries by mobile (2010-2011), only 20% of retailers have a mobile website. Wouldn’t you like your business to be in the 20% rather than the hidden 80%?

Depending on the type of business you run, you want to decide if your mobile site will be fully transactional or just offer a selection, be it information or sales. The mobile environment is particularly appealing to having a simply loaded site with locations, times, phone numbers etc- the basics. This means a quick solution to encourage visits to bricks & mortar outlets. Additionally you may add stock levels (such as Ikea) or specials only.

The future of geographic offers is coming, using locational technology, offers can be tailored to where you physically are. It will be easier to move to these specially targeted offers if you already have a usable mobile site.

Currently many websites are not suitable at all for mobile viewing, they are disjointed and can take 60 seconds or more to load. For those that are creating mobile sites, they see their traffic and conversions increasing as soon as a mobile version is implemented.

When a potential user has a poor experience, either your site is unreadable, very slow or doesn’t load at all, this can lead to a bad impression of your organisation. Turning around that negative interaction is an added imposition to businesses which never needed to happen.

Three basic ideas to work with which will improve your website for mobile users include:

  1. Reduce bandwidth to make your site load faster
  2. Scale back some of your content and lower resolution, keep the essentials: maps, directions, phone numbers, operating hours etc
  3. Have an interface that shows the content most applicable to mobile users first. Geographic offers, maps, phone numbers, directions etc.

Your website is the front door to your world, don’t forget that not everyone will walk the same path to it. For a small investment, be in the earlier adopters with a mobile version of your website and your site may be the only one in your category that users ‘on the go’ can enjoy!

Filed Under: Mobile Websites, Search Engine Optimisation, Site Architecture, Web Design Tagged With: , , , ,

SEO Web Design

17 September 2010

Web design and SEO web design are two very different concepts. With the technology available today, anyone can build a website and upload it onto the internet in a couple of hours. But all websites are not created equal. A good SEO designed website will consist of:

  • Proper HTML coding
  • Keyword-rich file names
  • Keyword-rich content
  • Appropriate page length and width
  • Robots.txt file for good search engine spidering
  • Keyword-rich heading and alt text tags
  • Sitemaps
  • Custom error page
  • An attractive visual design
  • User friendly and search engine friendly navigation
  • Appropriate use of style sheets and javascript
  • Cross browser compliance
  • W3C compliance

Successful websites must satisfy two audiences – primarily the user and then the search engines. Therefore the site design must be easy for users to navigate while allowing search engines to fully crawl the site. Hinder either and they will both leave without a second thought.

There are also web design techniques that we recommend be avoided. They include:

  • Frames
  • Flash animation
  • Small or fancy fonts
  • Music – if you must include music or an audio file, let the user play it as an option
  • Splash page
  • Horizontal scrolling
  • Excessive animated images
  • Excessive javascripting

These web design tactics may look high-tech, fun, or visually interesting, but they are bad news for search engine optimisation. Search engine spiders can’t read through frames, flash animation, music, video, or pictures so while they take up a lot of space on the page, they won’t tell the search engines what your site is about. If the search engines can’t figure out what the page is about, it may not be indexed.

You also don’t want anything in your web design that makes users do extra work. Don’t make them click through a splash page before getting to your actual homepage. Don’t make them scroll from side to side to read your text. People simply don’t have the time or patience to go through a poorly designed website. Make it simple for users to find exactly what they came for.

Don’t do anything in your web design that annoys or frustrates your users. There is nothing more disconcerting than clicking onto a web page only to have music blasting through your speakers. Users will hit their back button immediately to quiet the sound. Maybe they are at work and don’t want their employers knowing they’re on the web. These are all issues you need to consider before designing your website.

The best way to design a website you want to achieve high relevancy in the search engines is to keep it simple! Simple text-based navigation, instead of buttons, provides internal linking within your site and tells the search engines what your other pages are about. Your site should be 80% content, 10% navigation and 10% images. Consider hiring a professional SEO web design consulting firm to achieve this balance and get your site ranked at the top!

Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With: , ,