Are you focusing on your website as a MSP marketing tool that you assume will be accessed by desktop, laptop, and tablet? That could mean you will begin to lose visitors to your site.

Do you have a smartphone? How often do you search the web from your phone? Quite often, most likely. Notice a problem? Sites built only for “big screen” access are too difficult to use on a tiny phone screen. Lots of text, pics, and links work just fine on an 8”x12” screen, but are pretty much unintelligible on a smartphone. Websites need to be developed that are condensed for a smartphone screen.

Two immediate problems if you don’t address this issue…

• Visitors will abandon your site if they find it too difficult to navigate by phone and move on to the next search result. That is going to hurt sales.
• The increased number of visitors who stop navigating your site after page-one is going to help drop your search engine rankings. Lower rankings mean…more hurt sales.
• Google’s mobile-first preference to search results.

This isn’t an issue any vendor can let sit until later. Now, lets talk about the risks of not adapting your website for smartphone navigation (i.e. making it usable on a very small screen)

Today, I’ll talk about the damage to your brand image if you don’t tackle this problem. Here’s an example. Last week, I stopped at a national chain coffeehouse. I ordered, and sat down with my laptop? No, I sat down with my smartphone. The page that popped up to allow me to use their free wi-fi was trouble.

It had a great deal of text, including promotions, logos, disclaimers, a button to agree to their Terms and Conditions, a button to read the Terms and conditions, a button for help, and a button to gain wi-fi access. All four of these links were exceptionally close to each other. So close, that it took me fat fingering the wrong links several times until I finally hit the right one.

Now this isn’t the end of the Republic or anything, but it did leave me with thoughts about the company. Here is a corporate touchpoint, accessed by customers how many times an hour nationwide, and it was clearly not designed with a smartphone in mind. It was designed for a full laptop screen. What does it say about that corporation? What does it say about their interest in how their customers perceive them? In short, what does it do to their brand image? “Oh, yes. They’re the coffee company with the antiquated website who thinks everyone comes in and sits down with a laptop. Someone needs to tell their marketing department that flip phones are out of style”

Is that how you want to be perceived? Here are some tips to make your website mobile friendly–

• Limit content: Browsing the web using mobile can be tedious—even if it’s on a tablet. So make sure the mobile version of your website is simple. For starters, you don’t need to replicate all the content in your actual website onto the mobile version. Only the popular pages/links should make it to the mobile version. You might want to check out your web analytics to identify the pages frequently visited by mobile browsers.
• Site layout: Keep your site layout simple. It doesn’t have to mirror your actual website. And make sure it is mobile friendly…with big buttons that work on touch and clear font that’s easy on the eyes.
• Branding: While compromising on your content and site layout is needed, any compromise on your brand is a definite no-no. Ensure your mobile website follows your corporate branding standards in terms of logo, design, color and other brand elements.
• Compatibility: Ensure your mobile website is compatible with different operating systems and browsers. While you should definitely cater to the popular ones like IOS, Android and Windows, don’t ignore others like BADA or even those phones that offer web browsing as a feature.
• Loading time: People who check your website through cell phones are probably doing so “on-the-go.” They don’t have too much time to spend on you, so make sure your site loads fast and doesn’t keep visitors waiting.

Want to have a great mobile and search engine friendly, MSP website that attracts leads? Click here.