When it comes to building an effective, yet attractive mobile website for your business, following the industry’s best practices is crucial. Securing a high search engine ranking and attracting new customers to your business isn’t as much an art as it is a science. The following is an overview of some of the best practices associated with building mobile websites:
Keep it simple: Mobile web users are generally looking to find a specific piece of information quickly. Mobile users do not want to wait for pages to load and read through extensive content. Some easy ways to keep the interface simple so that it loads quickly are to use sparse, possibly compressed images and to bullet point any relevant, “need-to-know” content on your home page.
Make it easy for users to contact you or buy products from your business: Simple click-to-call buttons, SMS text options (that text your business’ info to the user’s mobile device) and click-to-buy buttons. The harder it is for users to find out the specific information they are looking for, the more likely it is that they will look to your competitor’s website.
Streamline the navigation process: In the theme of keeping it simple, the area of navigation through your website should be no different. Some of the ways in which you can keep the ability to navigate through your mobile website simple are to minimize the need to scroll down, create drop-down menus and make sure that there is a prominent search box on your mobile website’s home page.
Keep the focus local: People using mobile web devices are usually looking for local services or products, such as nearby gas stations, taxi services, restaurants, etc. Keep the focus local using maps and directions. Make it as easy as possible for local consumers to get to and patronize your business.
Keep the smaller screen size in mind: This best practice is really focused on keeping the buttons “thumb friendly.” Buttons make it is easy for users to click and navigate your website. Besides being large enough to recognize touch, putting more space between buttons prevents accidental clicks.
Mobile
