More and more of your customers are going to use their smartphones, iPads and other handheld devices to find your business. In fact, analysts are predicting that within five years, more people will access the Internet with mobile devices than with desktop PCs.
That means you need to make sure your website looks good, both on a PC web browser and on a tiny smartphone screen. A mobile version of your website will usually be a slimmed-down version of your regular website. It will be easy to read and fast to navigate for smartphone users.
Here are some tips for getting your site ready for mobile users:
- Don’t use Flash. Flash can make pretty animations, but it can take a long time to load and many mobile devices don’t support Flash. That means your mobile users will just get an error or blank spot on your website when they look at it on their handheld devices. And you don’t want that.
- Compress your images. This is good advice in general, but it’s especially important for mobile devices. Smaller images load faster, which means a better experience for your users. Use a tool like Smush.it (http://www.smush.it) to reduce the size of your images by 30-50%.
- Use a code checker like W3C’s mobileOK Checker (http://validator.w3.org/mobile/) to check the mobile readiness of your site’s code. You’ll get detailed results telling you exactly what changes you should make to get your site ready for mobile users.
With some planning and help from a good web designer, you can ensure your customers have a great online experience with your business no matter what device they happen to use. Plus, many of your competitors won’t take this step, and their sites will be hard for mobile users to navigate. By having a mobile-ready site, you’ll be better positioned to outrank your competition.
Photo credit: Photos by Lina