Is your website ready for the mobile consumer?
Take a moment and put yourself in Ms. Jones’s shoes. She just got off work and is riding home on the New York City bus for the next 40 minutes. Making the most of her long commute, Ms. Jones hops on her smart phone and surfs the Web in search of the perfect sofa for her home.
Like one-third of all Americans, Ms. Jones uses her smart phone daily to navigate the Web for quality information on the products and services she plans to buy. Ms. Jones expects a user-friendly Web experience on her smart phone and she won’t hesitate to leave a mobile site that is inaccessible or slow. So as a retailer, ask yourself this. Does your mobile Website give Ms. Jones a simple shopping experience? If it doesn’t, consider finding a Web development company that offers practical and accessible Websites for the PC, smart phone and tablet.
What Does a Good Mobile Website Look Like for a Retailer?
First things first. An effective mobile site starts before Ms. Jones even lands on it. Since Ms. Jones generally Googles keywords, like furniture or sofa in New York, your mobile site needs to show up in the top-20 results for Ms. Jones’s keyword search. This is accomplished through search engine optimization, and it includes quality copywriting with the repetition of furniture industry keywords and your geographic location, great product descriptions, Website linking and a host of other programming and HTML attributes.
Once Ms. Jones finds your mobile site and clicks it on it, it’s vital the site works on the major mobile operating systems. For instance, the mobile site needs to work on all Android and iPhone platforms since a majority of customers use these mobile operating systems – at the moment Blackberry is less important since the Blackberry is used mainly for business purposes, and as a retailer, you’ll notice fewer customers coming to your mobile site on a Blackberry.
As Ms. Jones peruses your mobile site, she’ll demand it performs similar to your actual Website. For a mobile site to function similar to an actual Website, it must load fast, its products must be easily searchable and they also must be categorized correctly (i.e. sofas in the sofa category, dining room tables in the dining room table category, etc … ). This is because each click on a mobile site matters more since the screen is smaller than a PC’s screen and the load time of each page will be considerably longer. Therefore, if Ms. Jones can’t navigate through your mobile site or it loads slowly, she will leave in lieu of another retailer’s mobile site.
When Ms. Jones finds a product she likes on your site, she’ll want to share it via Facebook, Twitter, email or a text message. Because of this, it’s necessary the products on your mobile site have a share option to allow Ms. Jones to send her friends your big bargain with one click. Plus if you sell online, you may want to consider allowing Ms. Jones to shop on her smart phone.
Finally, it’s important to stay away from certain technologies on a mobile site. Applications such as Flash won’t work on iPhones and it can confuse Ms. Jones or she may miss important advertising elements if you use them.
Mobile Websites are one more way Ms. Jones can find you. And if you’re not using the technology properly, you’re likely missing out on a massive demographic of shoppers waiting to buy your products and services.