Surfing on a Cell Phone

How important is optimizing your site for mobile devices?

While most people see the internet as something that you view while sitting at a computer, newer cell phones and mobile devices contain functionality to connect and view websites. Of course, this has many people wondering if their sites should be redesigned or altered to allow a better mobile experience. Here is some food for thought about whether it is an investment worth making.

Basically, it comes down to looking at your website and wondering about the circumstances of your visitor - people who surf the web on mobile devices make some sacrifices. Firstly, vision. The screens are tiny and hard to look at for more than a few minutes. Secondly, navigation. It's much harder to get to, navigate through and interact with a site than while sitting at a computer with a mouse and keyboard in front of you. Thirdly, expense. Mobile internet connections often come with either a charge per kilobyte viewed or an upper bandwidth limit (of course, this all depends on their service plan).

What this all means is that the circumstances which lead people to connecting their phones to the internet vary greatly from the circumstances in which they will surf the web from a home computer. They will not connect to the internet with a mobile device unless they are sure they can get the information they need quickly and easily.

Now - think about what people are looking for when they stumble across your site in particular. This will tell you a lot about whether your site may be visited by someone with a mobile device or not. If they're looking for point-of-fact information such as news, they may. If they are after your professional portfolio of images, they won't. If they are in their cars and need to get directions, they may. If they're shopping around for something specific, they won't.

Currently, we have one site for which mobile optimization can be of an obvious advantage, the website for Central California Home and Ranch. Visitors can find a property they are interested in, and text the information to their cell phone to follow up with the Real Estate Agent, or they can search the magazine using their phone's web browser.

Right now, there are no hard and fast rules about to what level mobile devices are being used to view the internet. But they are available and they getting more advanced and user-friendly. A time may come when they are the norm for browsing the internet. Until then, give us a call at (559) 683-4030 to help figure out whether mobile optimization is needed.