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With smartphone users on the rise – as well as the popularity of other phones and mobile devices such as tablets – it is vital to offer people a quick, easy-to-use mobile website that they can look at while on the go. Depending on your type of business, a good mobile site could drastically improve your profits: for example, if you run a café and someone in the vicinity searches on their phone for somewhere to eat. If you don’t have a mobile site or have a very slow one, you could miss out on their custom. With many people using their mobile devices to shop online, having a simple but effective ecommerce mobile site will also help increase your sales.

 

So what are the most important things to consider when it comes to mobile platforms?

 

 

No one is going to give your site a second look on their phones if it hasn’t loaded in the browser within ten seconds, so make your site as simple as you can. Get rid of any videos or large graphics: you don’t need them. When users are looking on their phones, they generally want useful information, not a beautifully-designed website with hundreds of images. 

 

 

Ensure that all your important business information – name and type of company, phone number, address, email address, hours of business if needed – is displayed in clear text at the top of your page. Text is better than an image not only for the load time but also because on mobiles, clicking on a phone number will let the user phone the company, and the same for email addresses. You want to make it as easy as possible for your site visitor to contact you.

 

 

Responsive layouts are website designs that work on all devices – from laptops to netbooks and tablets to phones – without losing any of the integrity of the site. It isn’t just about scaling down your existing website; this will result in mobile users having to pinch and zoom the browser, which they won’t put up with for long before closing the window. Responsive design often starts with the minimum required for a mobile site and then builds its way up to a full-sized monitor version. Mobile sites will include less images and just the important information, with more elements being added for bigger devices with bigger screens. It also means you don’t have to pay for two separate website designs.

 

Whatever you do to improve the mobile version of your site, test how it looks and works on a variety of different devices and networks to ensure maximum potential custom.