The Explosion of the Mobile Web…..Is Your Website Ready?
Just a few short years ago, it was a good bet that you would read articles like this one on your PC or laptop. Today, it’s just as likely that you are reading this article on a smartphone or tablet computer. So what’s changed, what happened? The mobile web happened, that’s what – and the Internet will never be the same. So, what’s the mobile web?
Loosely defined, the mobile web is a way of accessing the Internet via a wireless network, using a handheld mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet computer.
The Explosion Of The Mobile Web
The mobile web is growing at a phenomenal pace, and is forecast to overtake the desktop web in 2014. In other words, more users will access the Internet using a mobile phone rather than a PC for the first time.
Approximately 900 million people currently access the web with mobile phones, compared to 1.4 billion desktop Internet users. In 2014, mobile web users will outpace desktop users (approximately 1.7 billion mobile users to approximately 1.65 billion desktop users). By 2015, the number of mobile web users is expected to increase to 2 billion.
Assuming an annual growth rate of about 2 percent annually between 2010 and 2015 in cell phone subscriptions (77 percent of the world’s population will have cell phone subscriptions in 2010 and 87 percent will have subscriptions in 2015), about 6.35 billion people worldwide will have a mobile phone subscription and approximately 1 out of 3 subscribers (or 2 billion out of 6.35 billion) will be accessing the Internet on mobile phones. (Source: Wikimedia)
And according to the August, 2011 edition of eMarketer, 33 percent of mobile users are looking to access local content relevant to their GPS positioned location.
Is Your Website Ready?
So, what does all of this mean to you? It means more people than ever will be viewing your website through a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet computer, via a wireless network. It also means that if you want to survive and thrive, you have to adjust and adapt, and make your website mobile web friendly. The good news is, it’s easier than you think.
“Within the Alexa top 1,000 sites, 40.1 percent of all sites are mobile-friendly. These sites represent the world’s most popular web properties, like Google, Facebook and Yahoo!
Beyond the top 1,000, mobile friendliness still holds strong but is not yet as widespread. Of the top 10,000 Alexa sites, 29.7 percent perform well on mobiles. Once the input data is broadened to include the top 500,000 sites, the total number of mobile-friendly sites drops to 19.3 percent.” (Source: mobiThinking.com)
If you haven’t already done so, the very first thing you need to do is bring your website up to speed visually. In other words, you want to make sure that users of mobile devices can view your site optimally.
The quickest and easiest way to do this is to run your site through the MobiReady online testing site. This is a free service that evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards.
The free report provides both a score (from 1 to 5) and in-depth analysis of pages to determine how well your site performs on a mobile device. There are also other tools that will allow you to test your site for mobile readiness. In fact, here are 10 Excellent Tools for Testing Your Site on Mobile Devices.
Personally, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of these types of testing tools. For example, I ran my site through MobiReady, and it gave my site a 2 out of 5 score which, according to their analysis is bad. I got the exact same score before and after I mobil-optimized my site.
Here’s the problem: I’ve had many friends and colleagues of mine, all with different makes and models of smartphones, on a variety of platforms, tell me that my site looks just fine on their phones. So while testing tools may be a useful resource, the true litmus test is what users of mobile devices are seeing – so be sure to ask them.
That being said, there ARE things you can do to mobile-optimize your website.
How To Make Your Website Mobile Compatible 1. Have a fast-loading site. Chances are, most mobile-web users who are using their phones to access the Internet are using a slower 3G connection. You can help these users out by making sure your website code is clean, which will not only make for a faster-loading site, but faster downloads as well.
2. Don’t use flash. Not all mobile devices can see flash? Personally, I’m not a huge fan of flash sites anyway. But if you absolutely, positively have to have a flash site, be both smart and considerate. Make sure you have an alternate HTML version of your site as well.
3. Have a clean, easy to navigate website. Remember, mobile users are viewing your site on a tiny little screen. In addition, there is no mouse and not all mobile devices are equipped with a touch screen. So don’t make it harder for mobile users to view or utilize your site than it needs to be. Clean up the clutter and streamline your content. Simplify, simplify, simplify. If you keep it simple, your site will be user-friendly for everyone.
4. Use HTML phone numbers. Don’t make mobile users have to type in your phone number. Use HTML so that they can simply click to dial the number.
5. Avoid horizontal scrolling. Mobile users prefer to scroll vertically as opposed to horizontally. It’s easier and less of a hassle for them. Always create your content as a single column of text that wraps for mobile users.
6. Use images sparingly. As I mentioned earlier, most mobile users are using a slower 3G connection. As a result, heavier images can take forever to load. To avoid this problem, you should use images sparingly on your website. But if you do choose to use images, they should be lighter-weight jpeg, gif or png format. Also, make sure to compress your images to avoid zooming.
7. Voice Search. Google’s Voice Search on smartphones, has increased voice search usage by approximately 600% in the past year. Since mobile devices don’t have a traditional keyboard like a PC or laptop, voice search makes searching quicker and easier for smartphone users. So you should definitely keep an eye on this trend for SEO purposes. Bear in mind, people tend to search differently when speaking as opposed to typing. For example, while you might type-search “best virtual assistants,” you might voice-search “what are the best virtual assistant services?” Again, it’s a trend you should keep an eye on.
Indexing Of A Mobile Site
Google mainly recommends the following for better indexing of a mobile site.
• Google has a separate mobile bot for indexing mobile friendly pages. So, always redirect this bot (check for user agent ‘Googlebot-Mobile’) to the mobile version of your site. This bot should not see the normal site.
•Use the XHTML Mobile doctype so that search engine bots can clearly identify the page as mobile friendly.
•For each page, there should be a link for the standard view of that page. It will help Google to categorize mobile pages and its corresponding standard pages. (Source: The Right Way to Build a Mobile Site)
By David Jackson
Things To Keep In Mind Before Hiring A Web Design Company
With the present boom in e-commerce, a well designed website that attracts the attention of potential customers is indispensable to the owners of various small-scale and large-scale industries. Endowing the website of a particular company with a prominent online presence requires an in-depth understanding of the needs and business objectives of that company. Therefore the business owner would do well to sit and discuss his requirements with his web designer. Most importantly, the website should be so interesting as to keep the viewers glued on to the page. However, shoddy work is often noticed in websites for which a hefty amount had been paid. This can prove to be distressing for small business owners who often lack the means of employing a professional to redo the damage. Thus, the foremost criteria for building up a good website are to get hold of a good professional website designer who understands his employer’s objectives. It would be of immense benefit to follow a few guidelines to help identify a competent web designer.
Before embarking on the search for a competent and affordable website designer, it would be better to keep in mind a few points:
- The website should inform the customers about the kind of services provided by the company.
- Whether the site will require frequent information updates.
- The budget of the particular company.
- The needs and tastes of the targeted audience.
- Whether the company will depend on search engines to optimize it’s sales.
- The web designer should be acquainted with all the above criteria in order to create a profitable website.
The next stage is starting to look for a web designer. Here again certain things need to be considered:
- It is recommended that the business should check the portfolio of the web designing firm with whom they are entrusting their work.
- It should also talk to the previous clients of the concerned web designing company in order to ascertain whether they got the right service and guidance from the website development firm.
- Besides understanding the pros and cons of the company’s objectives, the web designer should also be able to improvise and build up a site that is capable of standing out from the crowd of other websites.
- The company should also ask the web designing firm to show them examples of their previous work. This will reflect on the capability of the web designing company to design professional websites.
- The website should also be easy to navigate. In order to retain the impatient online reader the web designer should ensure that no information is more than a couple of clicks away.
- It is important to form a long-term relationship with the web designer. Otherwise it will prove costly to add new features to a website, if the original website developer who built it is not there to update it.
- It is important that the website should load quickly. The concentration span of the average reader is very little. Therefore if the page takes longer to load it will have grave repercussions for the company. Prospective customers will veer away from the site.
- While designing a website, the web designer should stick to the particular layout which users have become accustomed to.
- If the company wants an e-commerce website, then the website should be so designed as to make it easy for buyers to buy products online.
- The web designer should not use too many special effects as this will lead to increase in loading time, which in turn might have a negative impact on visitor retention.
Following the above mentioned points, will increase the chances of getting hold of a competent web designing firm who understands the business of its customer and provides valuable services which helps in meeting the cherished business goals.
Why Search Engine Spiders Can’t Index Your Pages
HTML Problems Can Prevent Indexing. This is a common problem. Your web designer has created a beautiful page with nice graphics and great Flash animations. Unfortunately, it seems that search engines won’t list your website no matter what you do.
This can have several reasons:
1. The HTML Code Of Your Web Pages Is Meaningless To Search Engines
Search engines use very simple software programs to index your web pages. A web page that looks great to the human eye can be totally meaningless to search engines.
Search engines cannot see content that is presented in images (GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.), Flash elements, JavaScript and other script languages or other multimedia file formats.
If you use JavaScript links for your website navigation then search engines might not be able to find your website page.
Solution: Check your web pages with a search engine spider simulator. Spider simulators will show you how search engines see your web site.
If you use IBP’s search engine spider simulator, you can even enter the name of the spider, so that you can test if Google and Yahoo get different results when they visit your web pages.
2. The HTML Code Of Your Web Page Contains Errors
Some HTML errors can prevent search engine spiders from indexing your web pages. While most search engine spiders can deal with minor code errors, some of them will send faulty information to search engine spiders.
For example, your web page could contain a tag at the top of the page that tells search engines “the web page ends here” although your main content has not been reached.
Solution: Check the HTML code of your web pages with an HTML validator tool. You can find an HTML validator in the free IBP trial version.
3. The HTML Code Of Your Web Pages Doesn’t Contain The Right Elements
If you want to get high rankings for a special keyword then this keyword must appear in the right places on your web page. For example, it usually helps to use the keyword in the web page title.
There are many other elements that are important if you want to have high rankings.
Solution: Check the HTML code of your web page with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer. IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer compares your web page with the top ranked pages and it will tell you in detail how to change your web page so that it can get top 10 rankings.
4. Your Web Server Sends The Wrong Status Codes
Some web servers send wrong status codes. When a search engine spider requests a web page from your site then your server sends a response code. This should be the “200 OK” code.
Unfortunately, some servers send a “302 moved” or even a “404 not found” response code to the search engine spiders although the web page can be displayed in a normal web browser.
In that case, search engines will think that the web page doesn’t exist and they won’t index the page.
Solution: Use the search engine spider simulator to find out which response code your web server returns to search engines. If the response code is not “200 OK”, IBP’s search engine spider simulator will return a warning message. ( Editor’s Note: You can also check your status code with our free HTTP Server Response Code Checker )
If you want to get top rankings on Google and other search engines then you must make sure that search engines don’t misunderstand your pages. Use the tips above to make sure that search engines see what you want them to see.
Autor: Jason
