Designing Your Mobile Website to Draw Visitors

• Design the pages to fit the most-used mobile screens
• Limit images and text so pages load quickly even at slow connections speed
• Create links and other navigation options that are easy to click on with a (fat) finger, stylus, or other limited input options.
• Find out and address most urgent needs on the first page.

7. Avoid separate mobile websites:

Avoid building separate mobile websites, as each of these take up time, energy and money. It also makes maintaining and updating content difficult on all of them, not to mention the effort required to check and report on each one's performance. The best option is to build mobile platforms that are optimized for as many devices as possible. This is the optimal setup for focusing your resources and budget on developing engaging content rather than maintenance.

8. Aim for an easy mobile experience:

Successful and often-visited mobile sites are easy and clean. Consider having a survey to ask your clients what's really important to them and what they expect to see on your mobile website. Give out information that they seek like light image galleries on a wedding photographer site, requests for demos on a coffee vending machine site and menus with location maps on a restaurant website. Some more tips for a user-friendly site are:

• Use minimum layers to navigate in the compact screen
• Avoid artistic fonts and instead keep the text easy to read with crisp fonts
• Do not ask for too much information as typing on a mobile or iPad is not exactly pleasant
• Use technologies that are easily grasped by your target audience

Are you using a mobile platform for a broader reach? How does your mobile website/app help you better connect with your audience?

*/