Webtivity Internet Marketing Blog

Increased Smartphone Penetration Causes Mobile Browsing to Skyrocket

If you’re like 100 million other Americans, you use your smartphone to browse the internet each month.  Whether looking for a phone #, office location, or doing online banking, mobile surfing will continue growing in leaps and bounds.  What does your website look like on a mobile device?

Think about your own internet surfing habits: if you go to a website and it’s hard to find what you’re looking for, or it doesn’t display properly on your computer, what do you do?  You leave and find another website that conveniently serves the information you’re looking for.  This is especially true in the mobile environment.  People surfing on their phones (or tablets, or iPads)  are typically on the go, and especially pressed for time.  They aren’t in a mood to deal with your non-optimized-for-mobile-device website.

When someone arrives, you want your website to recognize if they are arriving via a mobile device.  If so they should automatically be directed to a special website that is designed to display well on a smaller screen.  Technologies such as Flash and JavaScript which are commonly used on websites cannot work on many mobile devices, so your main website may not display or function properly.

For example, our main company website has large photos to better promote our work and our messaging.  It also uses technology that does not translate well to a mobile device.  As a result, if someone arrives at our website on a mobile device, this is the website to which they are automatically directed:  http://m.webtivitydesigns.com.  Sure, it looks funny on your desktop computer.  But it loads super-fast and is easy to navigate on a mobile phone.  People can easily call or email us, or obtain directions to our office.  If they are inclined they can read more about us and even visit our full website if they choose.

The investment for a mobile website is a small one.  Remember, you don’t have to translate every page of your main website into a mobile site; just give mobile visitors a few pages of the most important information they need in order to do business with you.  With such a simple deployment, you open your company to those 100 million people who surf the internet on their mobile devices each month.  And don’t forget: people who adopt and use technology tend to have more disposable income.  Don’t you want to target them?

Learn more about mobile website design.

(Don’t forget — now that you have a mobile website, you can take advantage of QR codes and Microsoft Tags!)

Mobile Websites vs. Mobile Applications

At the time of this posting smartphones make up almost a quarter of the total mobile marketshare, and growth is accelerating blindingly.  As smartphones continue to increase in popularity we increasingly receive questions about mobile applications–you’ve probably heard Apple’s trademarked tagline, “There’s an app for that.”  With the popularity of smartphones, the popularity of applications has risen dramatically.  So does your business need a mobile website, or a mobile application?

My initial response is:  if you don’t have a mobile website, you have no business even thinking about a mobile application yet.  Have you ever tried to load a website on your phone that is not optimized for a mobile web browser?  The website may take forever to load (or not at all), and the formatting or navigation may be completely broken.  As a business owner you should always be looking for ways to make it easy to do business with your company.  A mobile website is a pretty inexpensive way to improve accessability for your company.

Remember, your mobile website typically doesn’t have to be a complete translation of your entire website.  For most companies your mobile website can consist of just a few pages of information geared toward an audience on-the-go.  Be sure to provide them with an easy way to find your phone #, directions, and enough information about your company to entice them to contact you immediately or go to your main website to learn more about you when they are at a desktop computer.

If you already have that squared away then you may be considering a mobile application.  In that case my first question to you will be:  how will you monetize it?  Unless you’re a global brand, or you think you may have the next great idea, chances are you don’t need a mobile app.  But perhaps you have an idea for an application you think people will pay for.  The most popular applications tend to be games, social media apps, news and sports apps and location-based apps.  Banking apps are becoming more popular as more people get comfortable with the notion of doing their banking on their cell phones.

If you determine this avenue makes sense you should consider that in order to reach the widest audience you will need to have your application developed for multiple platforms.  Android, iPhone and Blackberry are probably your biggest considerations.  Be aware that when the next cool phone operating system is released, you will need to have it developed for that platform as well, so be sure to also factor those costs into your long-term budget.

In the short-term you will need to budget for enhancements and bug fixing depending on the feedback and reviews you receive once the public starts downloading and using your application.  Even with intensive Beta testing and focus group testing, when you release it to the masses it is highly likely you will come across issues you didn’t anticipate.  Finally, be sure you have the resources ready at launch to quickly respond to issues that will inevitably arise or your customer ratings will suffer and we fickle smart phone users will delete your app and move on!