Going Mobile with your Business and Website
How to Create and Implement an Effective Mobile Website Strategy
Smart phones are quickly becoming the primary device people use to find directions, coupons, and do comparison shopping. If your business website is not properly formatted for smart phones or you are not offering mobile coupons, then you are missing opportunities to connect with customers who have 2X the national average income and are looking to buy now. And while targeting impulse buyers is critical, a great mobile strategy generates increasing mobile traffic and leads that can be converted to buyers.
High Level Mobile Website Strategy
Here is a strategic mobile roadmap that your business can use to gain or enhance your access to the mobile marketplace:
- Claim and customize your Google Places listing.
- Use a plugin to converts your WordPress website into a mobile format for mobile viewers automatically.
- Design a custom mobile homepage to meet the unique needs of your customers and market demographics.
Here are the benefits of each strategic step and how you can implement each to build and expand your own mobile platform web presence.
Google Places-The Best Place to Start or Complement your Mobile Strategy
If you have no mobile presence, you can enter the mobile market by claiming your Google places page listing. Google Places is already optimized and formatted for smart phones.
- Google Local/Mobile listing
- Mobile Coupons with QR codes
- Google maps with directions formatted for mobile phones
Claiming your Google Places Listing
Claiming your Google Places listing and optimizing it is critical to generate mobile traffic, leads, and sales. Google Places is a particularly good place to begin if you do not have a website yet or do not have a website formatted for mobile phones. Google continues to dominate search engine traffic and Google Places is the primary way people find local businesses online. Your listing can provide a high profile mobile platform and consistent traffic.
Do These 2 Things to be Successful with Google Places:
1. Reach a highly target audience with the proper use of keywords:
- Choose the 5 Most Profitable Keywords to your Places Listings (Use the Google Keyword Tool.)
2. Add the right features and benefits to get people to respond. This will include a reason to respond now, and social proof.
- Compelling Mobile coupon.
- Post pictures, videos, reviews, and get citations.
If you are ready to have your search results show up at the top of all Google Local Search results, then claim and optimize your listing now. To claim your Google local listing, go to Google Places and login to your Gmail account or create a free one.
Mobile Websites-Your Options
There are four basic ways to go mobile with your website:
- If you use the WordPress content management system to power your website you can download a plugin that generates a mobile version of your site. I have used previously used the WordPress Mobile Pack plugin and it is an excellent way to get your blog mobile enabled. This is a free plug in that scales down and converts your WordPress site to a mobile version.
- You can have multiple versions of your website for computers and mobile phones. You can run a standard WordPress theme and a mobile theme simultaneously with the WPTap plugin that detect what device is viewing your site and serves the correct version of your site to that viewer. And while you could provide a separate mobile version of your site for every mobile platform (iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry) the most practical way is it to serve a general mobile site in conjunction and converted from your standard PC formatted site. Depending on your market and consumer demographics, you may want to offer an iPad version of your site too.
- Individual mobile websites can be full content management systems or just one to three page sites with a coupon/lead generation page, map/thank you page, and an about page. There are premium mobile WordPress themes that plug into your site and not only convert your current website, but enable you to offer a different static homepage on your mobile site. I’ll be releasing a post tomorrow detailing exactly how to do this.
- Offer a dedicated mobile website on your domain. This would mean you would have to maintain two different websites which not ideal for most small and medium sized businesses.
If you need assistance or need help implementing a mobile campaign, we offer done for you services. Fill out our contact form if you would like to discuss creating a mobile web presence that generates leads.
By 2015, approximately 10B smart phones and web enabled mobile devices will be in use worldwide. Many consumers will own multiple mobile devices like an iPad and an iPhone. In New York City and other major metropolitan areas, mobile websites are a must have just to stay competitive.
Tomorrow, look for a new post that reviews premium mobile themes and another post on how to implement this strategy with your own website. This post will dispel the myths and hype while leading your through a process that helps you choose, create, and implement a mobile website to meet the unique needs of your customers and market demographics so you can generate more leads and sales.
Going Mobile with your Business and Website | Increasing Leverage http://bit.ly/hkxuwx
Going Mobile with your Business and Website | Increasing Leverage http://bit.ly/hkxuwx
I really enjoyed your post thanks for the valuable information. WordPress plugins offer great advantages as apposed to serving up different CSS content for non-wordpress sites.website design tips
Depending on your requirements of how many pages do you need in your mobile website. You can start your mobile website with initial three pages or have a customized version of your website done.
If a business wants to get an initial 3 pager website, so there are many mobile site builder creator with template
Going Mobile with your Business and Website | Increasing Leverage
Great post I think
the mobile web holds a lot of opportunities for traditional retailers. If
they’re smart and can take advantage of Geo location and mobile marketing it
could really help to boost the business
Hi Neil, Geo-location holds tremendous promise for retailers. The ability to send mobile coupons to people walking by your physical store is one of the most promising technologies being tested today. This technology alone could drive a tremendous amount of highly targeted traffic that is ready to buy.
Google has surprisingly sat back quietly while other startups have been hard at work dominating the mobile social and location space. That’s all about to change however as Google announced yesterday the introduction of the Latitude API. Since the beginning Latitude has failed to catch on with users due to the fact that it hasn’t quite catered to what most users want in an LBS service- primarily the ability to check-in and social functions made popular by Foursquare, Gowalla, and MyTown. With its new API, Google can now allow third-party developers to come up with their own apps that take advantage of Google’s immense location services. Which could end up spelling trouble for similar startups that have had to build their location database from the ground-up.
It’s a shame the only ‘options’ suggested in the article are related to WordPress.
Most of my readers, and the majority of the world use WordPress so the focus is on those tools. There are many other ways to go mobile with a site depending on your goal, technical expertise, and budget. I’ll be posting on how to build a responsive website soon by discussing Twitter Bootstrap and implementing it in RoR.