Make the most of your mobile Web site
How many of you have spent more time than you should trying to navigate around on a Web site using your mobile phone? Now, ask yourself: "Has my small business done all it could do to optimize its mobile Web site presence for customers or potential customers?"
More likely than not, the answer is "No." But as more of the general population uses smartphones, tablets and other devices with a relatively small screen to interact with the Internet or even to buy products and services, small and midsize businesses will miss out if they don't take steps to ensure that their Web site is easy to negotiate from mobile gadgets.
Enter a service from FiddleFly that helps SMBs optimize their Web site for mobile browsing.
Web2Mobile Full Demo from MOS Creative on Vimeo.
Alex Kutsishin, cofounder and CEO of Web2Mobile, said the FiddleFly service is targeted at businesses such as real estate companies, restaurants and retailers that benefit from helping customer prospects on the go. "When you are looking at something on your mobile device, you want it designed for that experience, not for a desktop," he said.
What does that mean? According to Kutsishin, here are three big things to keep in mind:
- Don't include EVERYTHING on your mobile site. That means if you have 15 different pages on your main site, it might only be three or four series for the mobile version.
- Make it really easy to find the phone number and physical address. It is surprising how hard it is to find address and phone number information on many Web sites.
- Avoid unnecessary graphics that make the site slower to load.
Pretty simple, huh?
FiddleFly's service is delivered through graphics designers, media companies and other affiliates involved in helping small companies market their products and services.
Kutsishin said agencies pay an annual fee to FiddleFly in order to use the service; they are in charge of designing and hosting mobile sites on behalf of their SMB clients. Those fees vary depending on the extent of the site and on the agency doing the design and hosting, but a typical annual fee range would be $250 to $1,600 per site, he estimated.
Again, the main guiding theme for the mobile Web experience: keep it simple and make it easy to find the most important information for getting customers to walk in the door. Things like phone numbers, addresses and directions to your physical location. "People search on the mobile Web are looking to take action NOW," Kutsishin said.