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0:13 – What numbers say about smartphone internet usage
0:52 – I’m an e-commerce: do I need a mobile website?
1:42 – I’m an informational website: does it pay off to go mobile?
2:13 – You don’t have a mobile website if it does these things
2:40 – Solution 1: Make your website responsive
3:37 – Solution 2: Create a dedicated mobile website
Hi, Fiona Soutter here from Super Savvy Business and welcome to this week’s Website Word of the Week!
0:13 – What numbers say about smartphone internet usage
Today I’d like to talk to you about mobile and how important it is for you to start thinking about having a mobile website if you don’t already have one.
Now, why am I bringing this up?
Well, did you know that the usage of the internet through mobile devices is growing at an incredible amount? In fact, 1.5 times per year!
By the end of 2015 Morgan Stanley predicts that more people will be accessing internet via mobile devices than from a desktop device.
0:52 – I’m an e-commerce: do I need a mobile website?
Now you might be sitting there and wondering how does this apply to your business?
If you’re an ecommerce site you might be wondering whether or not it is worthwhile having a mobile version of your ecommerce site.
I think a lot of the problem is a lot of people aren’t shopping so much on mobile devices yet because a lot of companies are not making their websites user-friendly. If you were to be one of the very smart companies that are already doing this, I think you will find that your sales are likely to start increasing as you will start to gain traffic from people who are using mobile devices to shop.
Now if you don’t believe me, perhaps you will believe the statistics Google has released, which suggest 35% of people have made a purchase using a smartphone.
Very, very sobering facts to think about, aren’t they?
1:42 – I’m an informational website: does it pay off to go mobile?
Now, if your site is not an ecommerce site but rather an informational site, you might be concerned that people don’t want to sit on their mobile phone and read page after page after page of long blogs or articles.
Now think again.
Here’s a stat you might want to consider: The New York Times says that a third of its website traffic is now coming through mobile devices and that is the reason why they are investing so much time and energy to ensure that their websites display properly and are very user friendly from their mobile devices.
2:13 – You don’t have a mobile website if it does these things
Okay, now let’s get down to the techno-geeky side of what I am talking about:
What does this mean for you?
You might say to me: “Well, Fiona, my website does display on mobile devices!” Well, your extended desktop website may be displaying, but isn’t easy to read.
Do people have to pinch and scroll in order to be able to read things or to click on links? If that is the case, then you don’t have what is known as a mobile site.
2:40 – Solution 1: Make your website responsive
Now, there are a couple of ways that you can go about getting yourself a site that is user-friendly for people on smart phones and smart devices, one of which is by having what we call a responsive website.
A responsive website is a website that will reframe and will resize itself according to the size of the screen it is displaying on, without reducing the size of the images and the text. It basically will respond to the size of the screen.
Now it does mean that if you are going to go down this path you are probably have to have your desktop website completely recoded so that it is responsive. But once you’ve done that, that means that it doesn’t matter what type of device people are viewing your site on, everything will remain consistent (whether people are on a mobile device, whether they are on a tablet device, whether they are on a desktop or a laptop computer).
So yes, it might be a little bit more work to get yourself up and going with a responsive site, but well worth it.
3:37 – Solution 2: Create a dedicated mobile website
You might decide that you are really happy with your desktop device and you don’t want to make some of the sacrifices that come with responsive websites (because there are some sacrifices as far as functionality and design are concerned).
If that’s you and that’s your situation, then you might want to consider having what we call a dedicated mobile site. This is where you have a site that is designed just for mobile devices.
So what happens is if somebody is searching for your site or goes to your site from a mobile device, it is automatically detected and, instead of your desktop version loading up, a mobile version will load up.
And it can be 2 completely different sites. Now, this is cheaper and often quicker to set up, bt of course, the downfall of that is that if you make changes to your desktop website you also have to separately make changes to your mobile website.
So there are a few little things that you might want to think about if you are going to have two separate websites.
So there you have it!
That’s my message for today and it’s a very important one; I know you’ve heard me talk about mobile websites before but I am going to continue to jump on this soapbox, because I still see so many business owners ignoring the fact that mobile internet usage is growing and increasing day by day by day. So don’t be one of the businesses that is left behind and doesn’t catch the wave . You don’t want your competitors to get ahead of you.
So think about whether or not you are going to have a responsive site or a dedicated mobile site, and make it happen!
That’s all for now; my name is Fiona Soutter from Super Savvy Business giving you the Website Word of the Week update. Take care!