Tighten Up: 4 Tips to Perfect Your Mobile Website

It's no surprise that mobile has been the way to go for everybody nowadays. From payments to interviews, everything has been taking place over the device that usually fits into a palm.

The thumb, which has always been important for human kind can take all the big decisions for everybody now. With one touch, you could find yourself in the streets of Paris while sitting in the comfort zone of your penthouse in Manhattan. And not only just roam around, you can book the tickets right there and then. That is just a glimpse of what the tiny device is capable of.

Moving to the business side of the equation, mobile has shaped up and made life easier for a multitude of businesses. Going mobile for business literally translates to getting things done, quickly and efficiently. Some of the best features about shifting your business to a mobile platform is its ability to reach out to a large audience in a short time, going international, track the audience following and the cost of marketing on mobile being cheaper than other traditional ways. But as dreamy as conducting business on mobile sounds, it requires one to have a great foundation, which is, a mobile website.

Creating a responsive website is not something you can just crack in a day, simply because you have to take into consideration the varieties of software and platforms available in the mobile industry. In all honesty, creating a beautiful mobile website which is equally functional too, is best left to a professional. Hiring a mobile website designer will save you time, energy and your business. Don't rack your brains too much, trust BluEnt to help you to keep up your reputation in the market and stay one step ahead of your competition.

You might not be a tech whizz, but what makes a good business owner is the fact that they have a spatial knowledge about everything that is going on in their business. What will you get out of this blog-post?

• Understanding of the basic components of a mobile website

• The difference between a mobile website and a desktop website

• The reason why you need to have different design techniques for both platforms

• The things you should include in your mobile website

• The guidelines you should give your mobile website designer to follow

Let's get started.

• Design: First things first, the design of your mobile website should be discussed with your mobile website designer even before you have the website laid out in front of you. Design is the very soul of your mobile website. Think of it as the first impression people have about your website. Why do you need to discuss the design first? Because design is the hardest part to knockout. Designing does not only mean the aesthetic value of your mobile website, but also the workings of the website. Different platforms require different designs. Here's some mistakes that show up when design is not talked about seriously:

  • The system tends to lag if the same features that are used for desktop websites are used on mobile platforms. A lot of it has to do with the difference in coding and design instructions used for web and mobile platforms.

    SOLUTION: Albeit the coding and designing of mobile websites is a technical issue, have a chat with your designer about what platform is more crucial for you to target at the moment. What your target audience is, which area generates more revenue for you. These points will allow your designer to come up with something on the lines of what will fit your business best.

  • Desktop websites have more display space; which mobile websites don't have. Fitting in all the design elements from the web to mobile is not practical and makes a mobile website look tacky. One should also remember, it takes up more space and creates a lot of cache data in the users phones if the design elements are too much to handle for mobile.

    SOLUTION: Keep one thing in your mind when it comes to mobile website design. Minimal is more. You want your consumers to remember your brand narrative, your logo and your brand identity. Keeping these three things in your mind, have a talk with your designer about what can be done. It should be impactful, fresh and not an entirely different entity than your desktop website. Keep the colors of your website similar, tweak the design.

  • Mobile websites should be immensely responsive, considering the fact that people close a website if a mobile website doesn't load in 3 seconds. If there are too many design elements, it causes the website to lag, worse, to crash every time someone would open the website.

    SOLUTION: As stated above, the more minimal you go, the better your mobile website works. Minimalism should not only be looked at as an aspect that gives your consumers' eyes a break, but it also improves the loading time of your mobile website. The fresher, leaner and cleaner your mobile website, the better is its response time.

  • The navigation is much harder than it is on desktop websites. Your menu options should be crisp, clear and easy to locate. This is one major mistake that most designers tend to make.

    SOLUTION: The best way to counter-act this mistake is to try and use universally recognized symbols or icons wherever possible instead of words. Navigation can be very frustrating on a tiny screen. Plus, having too many words requires the user to zoom in, which can cause the mobile website design to distort a little bit, leading the user to a completely different landing page.

• Call to Action: Though some might include the Call to Action aspect of mobile websites in designing itself, it is a very different ball-game all together. Your call to action methods matter more than you think. It is very important for a mobile website to have a great Call to Action button to be able to bridge the gap between a consumer and your business. Here are some common mistakes that are made regarding the Call to Action:

  • On some mobile websites, the biggest problem is that the Call to Action is too tiny or is too hard to find which ends up confusing consumers.

    SOLUTION: The Call to Action button should be bold, bright and big. It should be easily spotted by a consumer so that they know how to go about your mobile website and what they can do to get business rolling.

  • The Call to Action button may sometimes seem like a push from your business' end, which ticks consumers off. A lot of mobile websites are frowned upon when a Call to Action banner or logo keeps popping up whenever a consumer goes to another window or landing page.

    SOLUTION: Make sure your designer understands the difference between pushing your consumers buttons and generally informing them about the services you have to offer. Your Call to Action button, banner, pop-up shouldn't be extremely persistent.

  • Most mobile website designers tend to forget that Call to Action buttons should reflect the business' approach towards customers. If your Call to Action is written in generic language, consumers might just not want to interact with you for they might not feel the enthusiasm they expected to feel.

    SOLUTION: Make your Call to Action seem jovial and exciting within the paradigms of your brand voice. You want your consumers to want to contact you and not feel hesitant. Inserting a cute image to your Call to Action or an animation lightens the mood and makes your consumer be confident that you really are willing to assist them.

• Sharing Content: The world is coming closer to each other day by day. And for this to have been able to happen, social media channels deserve due credit. Being connected is one of the biggest advantages of the Internet, so it is only right for your mobile website to be able to bring people together. This is also one of those tiny things that actually have a huge impact on your business.

  • Your mobile website should be sharable, period. If you do not allow the contents of your website to be sharable, it leaves a bad impression about you for they might want to pass it on to their friends, family or colleagues.

    SOLUTION: Allow your consumers to be able to copy links so that they can forward it to the people they care about. You should add in the option to let them share it directly to various social media channels.

  • Most designers tend to not give the sharing links importance. If a consumer wishes to share your article, they should not have to constantly copy links and send it to individual people on different channels. It gets tiring for your consumer and your content won't get the reach you expected it to.

    SOLUTION: By adding in little icons of social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter which are linked to the mobile phone user's account, sharing your content becomes easier for your consumer. Also, add in the option for your client to be able to share your content through WhatsApp and E-mail.

  • The more you market yourself on social media channels, the more people get to know about you. Your designer should understand that mobile is the most used platform for marketing now, bringing you constant and heavy traffic. Most of your marketing should be done through your social media channels.

    SOLUTION: Include the links and handles to your social media channels on your mobile website. Encourage your consumers to like, share, follow you on these social media channels so that they can keep up with all the new products or services you have to offer. By getting connected on social media channels, you get to have an overview of what is working for your business and what isn't by being able to track the number of likes, views, shares, comments etc.

• Advertising: Advertising on mobile platforms is a completely different ball-game. With the Internet being accessed through mobile at an outstanding 56% you should be convinced that mobile advertising should be one of your main focuses when it comes to marketing your brand. The problem however, is that, just like all the points stated above, mobile advertising is substantially different from normal, desktop advertising. Here's some common mistakes made in mobile advertising that could be easily avoided:

  • Desktop formatting is completely different than mobile, a fact that has been established in this post right since the beginning. If you think the ads you put up on your desktop platforms will work the same way on mobile you're wrong.

    SOLUTION: Make sure that your ads are not lagging down your loading time of your mobile website. You cannot afford to have images, videos, gifs to not load causing a blackout of information, which consumers hate.

  • Mobile screens are way smaller than desktop screens, meaning you cannot give out a lot of information to your consumers on one page. Too much text or way too long and descriptive captions for your product can turn consumers off.

    SOLUTION: Ask your designer to design your mobile ad as if it were a poster. Keep the most important information on an image, a small and brief introduction about what you're promoting and a link to your website. This way, you get to track who all were interested in clicking the link of your website. Keep it simple and sweet.

  • Mobile is not just translated as bold fonts and text or plain and bright pictures. Studies show that videos have received 82% of positive impact to their business, which changes the narrative of advertising on mobile platforms completely.

    SOLUTION: Since video content is regularly devoured by consumers on a heavy basis, switching your advertising strategy to video might not be a bad idea. And no, you do not need too much equipment for it. A smartphone is more than enough. Using GIFs, mini videos and features like live are trending and will be staying in the market for a while.

In Conclusion:

• Design is a major component in creating a good mobile website. Do NOT overlook this.

• Call to Action is NOT a design component, rather a feature to generate more business for you.

• Give your consumers the ability to Share your content. This is the word-of-mouth for your business but on the internet.

• Mobile Advertising is entirely different than desktop advertising. Stay fresh and up with the trending ways of advertising.

Finding the right mobile website designer can be a challenging task. There are just too many of them in the market. You want to look for a designer who is on the same page as you and understands your brand and what would work best for you. Look no further beyond than BluEnt, which has a team of dedicated, intuitive and immaculate mobile website designers who will work for you and more importantly, with you. Contact us today to see what we can do for you.

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