Thirty-eight percent of American mobile phone users — 120 million people — access the web via their mobile device; fewer than 30 million are iPhones or Android phones. (Mobile Access 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project) and according to a research report by Morgan Stanley, mobile web usage will exceed all other web usage by 2015.
So this begs to ask the question: Should your organization “mobilize” its website?
I think this question could be best answered by looking at aspects of your organization and determining if the user could benefit from a mobile website experience. Some examples of taking parts of a site and making it mobile friendly could be:
- Ordering take-out or making dining reservations
- Getting information about a property for sale
- Accessing bank accounts
- Checking transportation schedules or checking into a flight
- Purchasing concert tickets
- Finding a class schedule at the local gym
The mobile consumer is a hunter, not a browser so something to always consider when making this decision is to ask yourself: what content on my website would the consumer just want to quickly do or find and therefore benefit from a mobile site? Mobile web pages are effective when they deliver precisely targeted information so it’s not really about taking an entire website and making a mobile version of it.
If your answer is yes to the question above and your organization could benefit from a mobile site, something else to consider is that mobile sites are also most commonly accessed via links from either text messages, Twitter, Facebook and email and secondarily, through mobile search. So it goes without saying that you should have a marketing strategy that supports engaging this mobile audience through those channels.
And since your mobile site could be accessed via search, it’s also key to make sure that your mobile site is coded with a style sheet that detects mobile devices. For example, I just about fell out of my chair last week when I entered southwestairlines.com in my Palm Pre only to be taken to the regular website. I thought surely Southwest Airlines has a mobile version of their app so that I can check in? Well, they did but it just didn’t detect my phone as a handheld device to redirect me. This can get tricky and I’ll leave the tech speak to the programmers but basically it’s important to remember that the mobile user is broad with the various use of IPads, IPhones, Blackberrys, etc so getting your style sheets right to reach a large market share of mobile devices needs to be considered.
So based on this, what do you think… is it time to mobilize?
– Isabel North
