If you haven’t made your website mobile friendly, it’s time you start thinking about it.  As of 2009, Google found that 50% of new Internet connections originated from cell phones, and there are 42.7 million smartphone users in the US.  These numbers are hard to ignore.

“ComScore, also reported that as of December 2009 more than 234 million Americans were using mobile devices — 28 percent of them to surf the Web.”  That translates into approximately 60 million potential customers.

Some examples of small businesses that have seen a positive ROI from mobile sites are:

Ken Beam, the creative digital marketing director for the Douglas Auto Group told Small Business Computing that, “It’s [mobile websites] all about convenience and being accessible…we want clients to be able to reach us anytime, anywhere .”

When optimizing your site for mobile browsing there are a few items you should first address before getting technical.  The first is content—less is more for mobile browsers.  They want to get the information quick and easy.  Cut out unnecessary information, and keep it simple.  Don’t make your visitors type or click a number of times before getting the information they need.

Page Load Time

Flash files  slow down your loading time, along with large picture files.  If pictures are necessary, there are ways to set up your mobile site to offer the option of the browser loading the pictures.  This lets your audience decide if they want to wait or not for the pictures—which tells your visitors you understand they may not have the time to wait for your page to load.

HTML5
HTML5 is slowly being adopted by programmers, and is in its “last call phase” of being complete.  HTML itself hasn’t had an upgrade in around 10 years, and a network of programmers are making some changes to help loading times all round.  One of these changes is a tag that will allow for video without using a flash file.  This is ideal for not only your computer based website, but for mobile as well.

Because HTML5 is so new, many browsers are playing catch up to support the new code.  Ask your developer if HTML5 would work well with your visitors, it could be a great option for your site.

Sub-domain
After you have decided on the style and content, you have a couple options for the actual conversion of the mobile site.  The first is using a sub-domain.  Because it is part of your original site, you will be able to use the same analytical tools for site analysis.

Using the analytics tool will allow your programmer to see which browsers your mobile visitors are using, which will allow him or her to program the site best for those browsers.

If duplicate content is a concern, there is a way around it.  Using a technique called browser-detection and redirection should take care of this for you.  This technique will allow the web crawlers to see that this is just a mobile version of your site, and not duplicate content.  If you see that the redirection doesn’t seem to be working, a canonical tag will, “push all the value from your mobile site back to your traditional site, and then rely on your browser detection and redirection to take care of the rest.”

If you are unfamiliar with a canonical tag, read this article at Google‘s webmaster central for more information.

.mobi
Just like the .com of the 90’s .mobi is trying to set itself as the main platform for mobile sites.  Because this platform is so new, businesses who may have missed out (or couldn’t afford) the domain they hoped for with .com could get it for their mobile site.

Companies that have already taken advantage of the .mobi domain are:

  • Balfour Beatty
  • Nike
  • Target
  • Wachovia
  • NPR (National Public Radio)

When it comes to mobile SEO, .mobi seems to be a better choice as far as search engines are concerned.  This is due to the fact that every .mobi site receives its own Internet Zone Files which are the files that search engines use to start their crawls.

Test
Once you have decided on the technical side of things, and nailed down the content being used you will need to test your site on multiple platforms.  Remember, how your site looks on an iPhone may be different on a BlackBerry.

Smartphones are also not the only type of cell phone device that has Internet access, so make sure you are testing on other cell phones as well.

With the right amount of testing and optimizing, a top notch website for both computers and cell phones is within reach.

About the B2Bblogger: Shannon Suetos is an expert writer for inbound call centers based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as telephone answering service at Resource Nation.

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