Tampa website design and hosting

Shawn - June 16th, 2010

Travel Light, You’ll Travel Further: Mobile Websites

While optimizing your website for search engine attention is the norm, the website design bar is now set higher to include optimization for mobile devices. This alternate version of your main site typically highlights the best and most significant features while omitting the battery draining, performance bogging videos and effects that just don’t translate to the small screen; most of them won’t even work. The act of zooming and scrolling alone is enough to make the most persistent iPhone Googler with the best eyesight search elsewhere.

But there are definitely a couple of things you should consider before you go to the expense of having a mobile version of your website created.

First of all, you need to take into account the type of information or services your site and/or your business provides. If you are a supplier of travel information, you’re going to want to cater to your subscribers on the move. Nothing would be more annoying for a commuter in Manhattan looking to obtain information on subway delays if a site takes longer to load than the train does to arrive.

Perhaps you provide information to paparazzi or news journalists on assignment abroad; they rely on immediate notifications of things like Lady Gaga sightings or directions to U.S. Embassy locations in other countries.

Another great example of a business that would significantly benefit from a “portable overhaul” would be an e-commerce one. Why lose a sale from a potential client trying to order Mother’s Day flowers on her BlackBerry while waiting for a connecting flight at the airport? Customers like her who no longer schlep their laptops on short business trips because they can tote feature rich hand-held devices are the perfect audience for a scaled down version of a website.

Amazon.com offers the ideal example of an effective sister site. Their mobile website is a perfect thumbnail of their main site, but stripped down to the hardcore essentials minus the ton of intricate graphics. It is completely functional and easy to navigate. (By the way, let us know if you find any other great ones!)

If you do think that creating a mobile version of your website is right for your business, you can actually take it to the next level by creating two mobile versions: one for Smartphones and one for simple phones. The sophistication of the mobile device is irrelevant; it’s the adaptation to the small screen that is essential.

As you know by now,optimizing for the search engines entails a complex balance of elements and methods that combine to enhance a website’s ranking. Optimizing for mobility on the other hand is about enhancing the site’s readability and transportable functionality.