Small Business Presence Increasingly Mobile - Page 2
If your content is hosted on a regular site optimized for use on a laptop or desktop computer, consider either the transition to a self-hosted blogging system and learning how to easily update the content yourself, or talk with your site provider about mobile options.
If your site is optimized for larger desktop and laptop screens, then you’ve only done half of your homework. What will it take to move your site over to be mobile-happy? Business 2 Community has a variety of great tips, including these I’ve modified with additional information:
- Use an m. sub-domain of your site to host the mobile-ized version of your virtual storefront. Your mobile site’s address will read something like http://m.mysmallbusiness.com. When search engines like Google come across these addresses, they know what they are, and will front-load your mobile version as a search return, when the searcher is using a small screen.
- Slim down the number of pages on your mobile site, to keep navigation simple. Many mobile sites have moved to a stacked-tabbed or button-based version of the site. These simplified formats are familiar to mobile app users, so navigating around your mobile site becomes simplified. No more than five tabs should do the trick.
- Keep the number of images on your mobile site to a minimum, and keep them small - in the vicinity of 320x240 pixels. No more than one or two per page is a good guideline. Remember, mobile phones often load pages slower than home computers, and sometimes a shopper’s patience is already worn thin. The fewer and smaller the images, the better.
- When determining how much text to put on a page, think short sentences, or maybe even bullets. Nobody likes to scroll through a lot of text on a small screen. If some items simply require a longer explanation, use a “(more)” link (as in “for more information”) and put that extra content on its own page.
- Stay far, far away from Flash-based content, as most mobile devices are not compatible with the rich mixed-media format.
- Push special advertising specials to your mobile version, as a form of reward for your customers finding you and spending time on your site on the run. Maybe double the discount, or provide a mobile-only virtual coupon with a barcode or qr code your register scanners can read.
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