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Mobile Internet Access Has Doubled. Are You Ready?

It's not surprising: more people than ever are accessing the Internet through their mobile phones. By the end of 2009, more than 2 billion mobile phones will be in use worldwide. During 4th quarter 2009, Apple alone sold more than 1 iPhone per second. What is this mobile audience doing?

On the spur of the moment, a mobile web user may:

• read product reviews while waiting in a checkout line
• examine the traffic report as they leave work
• track a package delivery, or their favorite sports team, or the status of their flight
• describe a problem to customer service—giving a company an early opportunity to address the issue

[And yet,] "Our figures indicate that up to 10 out of every 100 users are now routinely entering web addresses from their phones and hitting a site designed only with desktop PC users in mind, which results in a bad experience. Businesses should be asking which handsets, countries, and languages matter most to their business and developing a mobile strategy to match this."

- Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing and Alliances at Bango

So how do you help your mobile audience find what they need? Take your business to them, via your mobile website. It's a smart marketing move to catch a growing audience.

How to Design Your Mobile Websites

• Your customer's first impression. Give your mobile user a first-class visit from the start, whether via desktop or mobile device. Your mobile website should feel comprehensive and not merely pared-down from your full site.
• Your customer' screen and device limitations. Your mobile user's screen size shouldn't limit their web experience with you. Make sure your mobile site looks good on any mobile screen size; e.g., 320x480 pixels on an iPhone, 240x260 for the Blackberry Pearl. Minimize the use of graphics, cut out multimedia, and consider carefully whether a download should be used.
• Your customer's time. Streamline your web content to help your mobile user find the essentials. Divide longer content in logical places over separate pages to minimize scrolling issues. As a rule, remember that your mobile customer is in a hurry and will abandon any page that takes more than a couple of seconds to load.
• Your customer's experience. Make your website informative and easy to use, and your mobile customer will keep coming back.

Mobile IP traffic will grow 66 times by 2013, a 130% compound annual growth rate. The report also found that smartphones will out-ship the global netbook and notebook market by 2010 and the overall global PC market by 2013.

- Telephony, reporting on the Morgan Stanley Mobile Report, 12/17/2009

See the Difference Mobility Makes

Examples: Webpage as viewed on a desktop monitor.

Example: On this mobile device, the same webpage is shown, but it's not optimized for mobile viewing:

It's the same website, but because it's not optimized for a mobile device, it's actually harder to navigate on the small screen. When you come to a website on your mobile device, your expectation of the experience is different from that of a desktop site.

Example: A webpage that's optimized for mobile viewing.

The page is clear and can be easily viewed and navigated on a mobile device.

If you think supporting another website just for your mobile customers is too time-consuming and costly, we have an innovative solution—how about maintaining your desktop and mobile sites at the same time?

Our Innovative Way® CrossLink™ web platform helps your developers and marketers manage--and market--both of your sites without any extra overhead.

CrossLink Suite. Less Maintenance. Better Marketing.

Request more details on how CrossLink can streamline your web content management and boost your online marketing at 1-888-242-5751.