How to make your website mobile friendly

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How to make your website mobile friendly Posted in Mobile Marketing, Concocted by Fred Roed, 7 comments
Published on 17 January 2011

These days it’s becoming a standard question in client meetings; “…what about mobile?”

Clients have realized that building a community is critical to their marketing campaigns. Brands like Red Bull and Ray Bans are hitting the social channel hard. Gucci are moving millions from their traditional budgets to engagement via social media. As social networking becomes increasingly more important in community building strategies, we need to be cognisant of some seismic changes in the mobile environment – the key one being that audiences are looking at Facebook and Twitter more via their mobile phones than on their desktop devices.

There is no escaping that Social = Mobile. However, there are VAST differences in the browsing behaviours of people on mobile as to those on desktop. At World Wide Creative we’re busy with several mobile developments, and here are some quick do’s and don’ts we employ.

Don’t:

Replicate your website layout in your mobile site
Think that people will behave the same on a mobile site
Use the same layout and design for your mobile site as your website
Use images links for navigation

Do:

Simplify your mobile site to the MOST important action points
Figure out what the motivation for a customer to visit your mobile site
Use a minimal amount of graphic elements, and where necessary, keep them simple and clean
Use crisp, clear fonts
Use text-based links

Some good examples of easy-to-use mobile sites:

Read more posts by Fred Roed

Fred is the CEO of digital marketing agency World Wide Creative. Fred co-founded The Heavy Chef Project, as well as Ideate, a forum for African entrepreneurs. Fred focuses on online brand building, marketing strategy and loud Hawaiian shirts. Fred is famous for his sartorial excellence, long diatribes about music and fanatical attention to detail when making pizza. Follow Fred on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Fred_Roed

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Tagged with mobi site, mobile friendly website, mobile site, Social Media, social networking.

naeem says

(January 17, 2011, 3:23 pm)

ecommerce no mobile is a different beast altogether

You guys seen any decent mobile sites for ecom stores? – i’m thinking a dedicated mobile App would be the way to go instead?

Mobi site landing page, prompt to install app. Once app is in, you have more flexibility.
Fred Roed says

(January 17, 2011, 3:34 pm)

Actually no, I’ve not come across a really cool e-commerce mobile site – but maybe because I’ve not looked hard enough.
Fred Roed says

(January 17, 2011, 4:08 pm)

… and yes, we’re working on a mobile version of the Heavy Chef site : )
Tim Bishop says

(January 17, 2011, 4:55 pm)

Computicket.mobi (the first example given above) is an ecommerce mobi site.
You dont have any more flexibility in an app, apart from perhaps easier to manage basket functionality. Mobile web is a lot more flexible and compatible with 6000 devices and can be integrated into multiple payment methods/wallets.
Fred Roed says

(January 17, 2011, 5:05 pm)

Thanks for the comment, Tim – To be clear, I’ve not come across a really cool *retail* e-commerce site. Computicket is more service related, sorta like buying airline tickets. A great site, but I’m guessing Naeem (owner of http://www.autostyle.co.za) is asking for a more classic example of retail e-commerce.
Andrew Smith says

(January 17, 2011, 6:54 pm)

A number of sites use these guys for their mobile e-commerce: http://www.digby.com/
I don’t think there are any e-commerce stores of physical products in SA doing it well.
Sue Levy says

(March 11, 2011, 9:19 pm)

Interesting Article that summarizes what I needed to know.Thanks

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