The growth of mobile phones and internet usage via mobile phones has increased. To quote a recent statistics about growth of iPhone ‘Verzion expected to sell 13 million iPhones in 2011″ People these days are looking forward to market their product for mobile web users. Websites have special mobile version, individual mobile apps that gives rich user experience when they browse websites via their mobile phones. Also, tablets and smartphones are the next big thing. So obviously optimizing your websites for mobile devices becomes a very important task. For a mobile version, the website should be easy navigational and elements should be properly designed.
There are many software’s, plugins and apps to create a mobile version of a product page or blog or website. But before developing them, there are 3 things that one should take care when optimizing websites for mobile devices. Below is the list of things that one should look out before getting into developing mobile site.
Note #1
iPhone and Android plays a huge market in mobile platform. So developing your mobile website should mainly target android and iPhone users. Important emails, newsletters should be viewed correctly in mobile devices. Because these are the two main things where you communicate with your readers. So aligning your newsletters or subscription emails should be viewed properly on mobile devices. Also make sure how your calls-to-action (such as clicking the ok button, or some button that has an action to work) and offers work on mobile devices.
Note #2
If your website is offering some sort of downloads, then one should make sure how the downloads thing work on mobile devices. If you’re offering downloads or any other stuff such as saving files, then make sure it works correctly. Test the feature on major mobile platform operating system such as android, iOS, PalmOS, Blackberry OS, Symbian, Meego etc.
Note #3
The recent stats, In 2011 more than 60% of mobile traffic is for videos. So if your website displays videos and live streaming facilities, then optimize videos for mobile internet users. One should make sure that the users face less bandwidth consumption. You can develop the mobile site like if a user streams the video via a web interface(from desktop, laptop or from Wi-Fi) then you can stream the HD video else when they are on EDGE connectivity, the video should automatically play a low quality version. Make sure you stream HD video only when they are in Wi-Fi mode.
Usually i use mobile plugin for wordpress. so whwn visitor come from mobile devices, site will be loading faster.
Didn't knew iPhone and Android holds such a huge market. I have seen that conversion rate is also good in mobile site compare to website. Maybe this is the reason Google adwords and chitka have introduce click to call option on mobile ads.
Thanks for the Tips, One thing here I want to add for the tech people that the use of mobile jquery helps a lot in building the mobile device websites. Mobile jquery works in almost all platforms.
I personnely surf net a lot from my cellphone and it surely gives you a better experiance when surfing through a mobile site. the future is all about hand held devices 🙂
Nowadays,mobile internet usage has been increased with the great support in it. It's really helpful to all the people in the wide 🙂
Sometimes, small businesses will understand the concept of mobile websites before big businesses. In fact, there was a local beer company (who is a big company) here who had a contest going on but you had to scan their QR code which took us to a website so we could enter the contest. However, the page was completely broken. I'm not sure if it was just a glitch at that moment or they didn't test on all platforms, but it was a little discouraging.
Videos are huge and like you said, it's important to make sure they work. 🙂
Anything that you do in mobile websites or apps, just make sure it works before you release it. 🙂
I, personally, hate when I try to go to my site on my iPhone (which allows me to view actual websites as they are) and I get a stupid mobile version without the functionality of the real site.
I think the only thing that is really important is making mobile version IF you have flash components on your site b/c the iPhone won't render them.
Other than that, I wish sites would leave the mobile stuff alone and let my iphone do what it was made to do – browse REAL web pages.
I also get 10% of my site's traffic from mobile devices. I'm always care about what problems of my mobile visitors facing problems.
making a mobile friendly site is pretty easy in wordpress and blogger. For wordpress one can use “mobilepress” and for blogger i got a post about that : http://bloggingehow.blogspot.com/2011/06/make-mobile-friendly-version-of-your.html?m=1
Thanks! I receive about 23% of my blog traffic from mobile devices everyday and was planning to develop a mobile site as well. Will keep in mind your points!