SEO & Online Marketing
Marketing your small business online is not just Marketing 101. You also need an understanding of how search engines find sites (SEO) and how your customers use websites.
Targeting Mobile Devices
I belong to a local business support group. At our last meeting the topic of iPhone apps came up. iPhone apps are getting to be like blogs – everyone thinks they need one, they just don’t know why. I mentioned that a webpage for mobile devices would be more appropriate.
After the meeting I was asked how they work – so here are the basics.
Unfortunately, mobile devices come with a wide variety of features, so targeting one device may exclude others. The best advice is use the old “Keep It Simple Stupid” (KISS) rule. This means simple graphics and text and using CSS instead of tables (Your web designer will know about that.) Even simple things like forms may need to be changed to work on all the devices out there.
Your site layout may need to change as well. While we recommend that the product be the feature for your websites home page, you should make the contact information the main item on your mobile website.
Next you will need to decide on where to host the mobile website.
There are two options. The first is to use the .mobi domain extension – for example www.mysite.mobi. This extension is reserved for websites targeting mobile devices.The other option is to automatically redirect mobile devices accessing your website to a section setup to handle them – for example www.mysite.com/mobile.
Each has its advantages and disadvantages. The first requires the user to type in different domain name but is universally recognized as for mobile devices. The second allows you to target specific types of mobile devices – for example www.mysite.com/iphone, to target iPhones. However, the code that does the redirect need to be brought up to date as new devices become available.
I prefer the second method. Updating the code is not as hard as it sounds and having everything automated around one domain name makes thing simpiler for users. Which is a good thing.
With mobile devices out numbering computers, having a website dedicated to mobile devices is just good business.
Tags: business, mobi, mobi domain, mobile devices, web design
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