Is your website making room for mobile technology?
There are few sure bets, particularly in the technology space. A few years ago, social networking was something you did in person over drinks and bad appetizers. Today, it's something you do on websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Despite all the rapid change that's keeping us on our toes, there's one thing we can all count on: the increasing importance of mobile devices in terms of how people consume media and interact with the world in general.
There are plenty of statistics that back up this assertion. One recent report from ComScore said Americans are spending 60 percent of their time online using mobile devices — smartphones and tablets. That's up from 45 percent in early 2013. Mobile apps are experiencing similar growth, accounting for 51 percent of time spent online. Desktop traffic, by contrast, has been on a downward slide since late 2013.
What all these numbers mean is that more and more customers are going to be accessing your company's website not from their bulky desktop computer with wide, flat screens, but from their lightweight, pocket-sized smartphones. And your website needs to be ready.
Small scale
By ready, I mean that your company's website must render quickly and easily on smartphones as well as tablet computers. If it doesn't, you're missing out on potential new or returning business. And as the adoption of mobile technology increases — as it most definitely will — that piece of your customer pie is only going to grow.
Paul Wackell, owner of Worcester-based Imagine Web Designs, starts nearly every conversation with a new client talking about mobile strategy.
“Usually when I bring [mobile] up it's the first time people have heard it,” Wackell said. Mobile has to be part of any Web strategy today, although that idea can be met with resistance, Wackell noted. In those cases, he simply shows his clients their Web traffic reports that show the percentage of traffic coming from mobile devices, which is usually growing.
“The question for a business owner is: Are they effectively getting their marketing message across when they look at the website on a mobile phone?” he said.
If your business doesn't have a mobile strategy, the answer to that question is probably “no.” The solution is to either build a website using technology called responsive design, or to design a separate mobile website.
Introducing responsive design
Responsive design is a relatively new programming language that allows a website to recognize the size of the device that's visiting it and render the site to fit that device's screen. While responsive sites are a bit more expensive, they're becoming more affordable, and can be the best option for small businesses with a brand new website or a small number of pages, Wackell said.
A mobile website, according to Wackell, is more suited to larger, existing websites with more than 50 pages. It can be costlier because, in essence, it's a separate website, and it can be a bit trickier to maintain because you may have to make changes to site content in two places: once to the desktop version of the site and once to the mobile version.
Whatever technology you employ — responsive design versus mobile site — the key to a strong mobile presence is to follow that age-old adage: Keep it simple.
“It's about being simple and functional at the same time,” Wackell said. That means your mobile Web presence should include shorter blocks of text, fewer pictures and the most basic information.
“To me it always comes down to: How do we best deliver your content and your marketing messages to your clients?” Wackell said.
So, if you haven't taken a look at your business' website on a mobile device, now's the time to do it. And if your marketing message is muddy and confusing on that smartphone screen, then it's time to build a mobile strategy.
Christina Davis can be reached at cdavis@wbjournal.com.
WBJ Web Partners
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