Tag: mobile websites

Tips to create an effective mobile friendly website
The Smartphone has undoubtedly become our window to the outside world. With statistics indicating that India will have more than 650 million Smartphones by 2019, this window is only likely to become ubiquitous.

Why do I need to make a website mobile-friendly?

The portability offered by the Smartphone is second to none, making it the gadget of choice for anyone who doesn’t have access to a desktop computer or a laptop. It is for this reason that it becomes essential to optimize websites for use on mobiles, as a website’s desktop version is quite different from that of a mobile version. In order to improve the user’s experience on the website, and let them get the most out of the visit to the website, it is crucial to develop a mobile-friendly version of your desktop website.

How is a website’s desktop version different from its mobile version?

A desktop version is designed to fit the screen of the relatively bigger desktop computer. When the same website is viewed on the mobile, the contents are not optimized to be viewed on a smaller screen; the user needs to zoom in and out to view the contents better. Furthermore, websites with many images or high resolution images take more time to load on a mobile than on a desktop or a laptop. In a mobile version of the same website, the size and resolution of the images are optimized for quicker and more efficient loading.

Where do I begin?

One needs to take into account the access to developer resources, expertise, and one’s business model before embarking upon the task of transitioning their website from a desktop version to a mobile version. Essentially, creating a mobile site involves taking parts of your current desktop site and establishing them in a mobile- friendly design.

What are the top three factors I need to consider when designing a mobile site?
1. Ease of use for visitors
Begin with outlining the possible steps that the site user may engage in. Simplify the process to ensure that each step is easy to complete on a mobile phone.
1. Effectiveness of use
Measure how conveniently the user can carry out their tasks on the mobile site. A user- friendly interface is the foremost factor that any visitor to your mobile site considers and appreciates.
1. Consistency in design pattern across all platforms
Using a Responsive Web Design ensures that the page uses the same URL whether the user is accessing the website from a mobile phone, desktop, or tablet. The core benefit of using such a design pattern is that you need to maintain only one version of the website as opposed to two which includes a desktop and a mobile version. With RWD, the website responds as per the screen size of the device being used to access the website.

What are the different design patterns? And how does the search engine recognize my site across different platforms?

Your website can appear in one of the three ways, as follows:
- Responsive Web Design
With this design, your website’s URL as well as HTML code remains the same across all platforms such as mobile, desktop, and tablet. The only thing that changes is the way the content appears on the screen, depending on the screen size.
- Dynamic serving:
It uses the same URL not considering the device type. However, it generates different versions of HTML depending on the device.
- Separate URLs
Such a configuration identifies the device the user is using, and accordingly redirects them to the appropriate page.

Regardless of the kind of configuration you may opt for your mobile site, your site will benefit from the added convenience that site visitors and users receive from the new interface.
December 29, 2015
Google Mobile Friendliness – Important Parameter for Ranking Higher
Google has finally decided to accord mobile-friendliness along with indexed apps the importance from a ranking perspective, after a long period of testing. They have recognized that you are making more use of their mobiles to surf internet and want to reward sites that are mobile friendly by ranking them higher.

New Algorithm

A new algorithm will come into play from April 21 and this would impact mobile searches globally in all the languages. Google has suggested that you as a webmaster should prepare for this change by taking the mobile friendly test and check out the mobile usability of your site through the Mobile Usability Report in the Google Webmaster Tools.

In addition, Google will with immediate effect regard all information from the indexed apps as one more ranking factor to decide search engine ranking of sites. All signed-in users like you that have installed the apps will benefit from this and more importantly content from such indexed apps will also rank higher for relevant queries than before. It becomes therefore imperative for app developers like you to now strike a relationship between their own Web pages and the app links they point to.

Two Improvements

Following this development, you will now get relevant as well as timely search results on your mobile devices and it will not matter where that information resides – on the apps or on the web pages. Google said that as compared to their earlier update algorithms that focused on site configuration, this new one will be enable the following:
1. Help you find sites that are mobile friendly within the search results. It will have an impact across languages globally and you will now find it much easier to get the results that are fully optimized and suited to display properly on their devices.
2. Most appropriate and relevant app content will feature in the search results. Google will use the data they get from all indexed apps for this purpose. This will enable them to push such content more prominently and ahead of others to provide full value to you as the visitor to that site.
Be Mobile-Friendly Or Perish

This debate on whether a mobile-friendly site was necessary for a winning SEO strategy has been going on for some time. But this latest announcement from Google signifies that if you as a webmaster cannot make the necessary changes to make this transition, you could lose out big time. Unless you are able to put forth a mobile-friendly site by April 21, you will suffer loss of ranking.

This initiative was expected as even recently Google was encouraging webmasters to make sites mobile-friendly, sending out notifications through their GWT. They also added the mobile usability report and launched the mobile-friendly testing tool within the GWT as clear indicators of their intentions.

More and more sites will now race against each other to fulfill this requirement. Those of you are already there will benefit earlier. It is clear that only mobile-responsive sites will get the preference from search engines like Google for ranking as it is believed they provide a much better user experience.

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March 17, 2015
How essential is it for you to go mobile?
With trends revealing increasing browsing activities through mobile phones especially smartphones and tablets, it becomes inevitable to have websites which are easily accessible with the mobile platform and interface. Digital marketing experts strongly believe that internet traffic through mobile is going to increase manifold. For quite some time now, SEO experts have been advising clients a dedicated mobile site to capture the incoming traffic while being search engine friendly too. Hence, it makes sense to invest in online products and channels wherein the purpose of attracting traffic online is solved and to a great extent attracts conversions too.

Though for some, this predication is skeptical but likely to be quite accurate. There have been arguments stating the mobile technology is new and customers are likely to take time to adjust. Conceding the fact that many established online portals have proceeded to offer the same to their customers/visitors, it is time online businesses do give it a serious thought.

In fact, Google has recorded increasing number of visitors making purchases through their smart phones along with the fact that more than three quarters of the online visitors made a purchase online. Emphasizing on the undertones that despite the presence of the desktop, users found accessing the sites through their mobiles/smart phones easier and much more convenient which does relate to gearing up new strategies and developments. It’s time ecommerce retailers sit up and adapt to this trend as soon as they can.

Trends reveal that users prefer to access information, shopping deals, reviews and other related information through their in hand mobile devices especially when they are on the move and about. Consider it as an activity which keeps them engaged or provides them with vital information at their fingertips, a time saving activity

Thinking of proceeding with the development of a mobile site? Well, the most popular options are either you have an entirely different site to cater to mobile visitors or you could develop a mirror image of the website which is smaller than the desktop site or an entirely different site. On the overall, make sure you have site which serves the purpose of your mobile visitors and is quite responsive too.

Whilst planning a mobile website, website owners need to analyze and arrive upon the following parameters –
- Goal of mobile website – offer information or encourage conversions
- Extent of content offered – use the same content or have a different content
- Analyze Visitor Traffic – study the activities of visitors on mobile website before proceeding
From the SEO perspective, having an entirely different site catering to queries and requirements through mobile phones works in a great way rather than slightly tweaking an existing desktop site to suit mobile traffic.

Responsive Sites

Since both the sites, desktop as well as mobile are pretty identical, owners will need to update a single set of content. Bear in mind, content will be viewed on a smaller screen when accessed through a mobile as against the large screen of the desktop PC. In fact, by offering more compatibility these websites are known to perform much better. They could even build up responsive sites bit by bit and study its performance in a similar pattern. This helps you make it even more responsive as per the traffic analytic reports.

The other alternative is to make a separate but an identical site with same URLs for mobile use but make sure the site is dynamically served on to the mobile devices when accessed. This means the issue related to broken URLs is taken care of.

Many a times, visitors could be complaining of content loading issues on the mobile device but then it pays to have concise content which does reduces the loading time too. Images are dynamically served as per the screen size of the mobile device which makes things even more convenient. Use of simplified Java Script or switching over to HTML 5 is advisable as it helps the website to function in a better manner.

Separate mobile sites

Separate sites do have a definite edge over responsive sites for they can tailor made to cater to specific requirements of mobile visitors. This means they can be very different and tweaked to include keywords while adapting to mobile search engine parameters. The main desktop site is left untouched while developing a new mobile site offers the much required flexibility to innovate and try out new ideas too. Don’t miss out this opportunity to be creative to the best of abilities and try them on an entirely new platform.

For survival of any business, online or offline, being dynamic is essential. Hence, adapting to new environments such as mobile platforms becomes the need of the hour. By launching a mobile website parallel to the desktop site, visitors and relevant traffic is taken care of to a great extent.

LogicSpeak:

The number of users accessing the web on their mobile devices has dramatically increased. This is because of the availability of more affordable smartphones in the market. Mobile devices are no longer just for basic texting and calling. They are used almost the same way as computers. This is the reason why mobile websites are vital for businesses that would like to build their presence online.
January 24, 2014

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