Is your website mobile friendly? If not, get with the program!

The importance of mobile optimization

The use of mobile devices is increasing steadily every day. The cell phones of yesteryear that were used to receive and make calls are being replaced with a dizzying array of intelligent devices that offer the user hundreds of functions design to smooth and facilitate the tasks of everyday life. There is a device that appeals to every kind of user, and they are widely available. Furthermore, the technology that makes them so user friendly shows no sign of slowing down, and it can be expected that they will only be more intuitive and useful in the future. Knowing this information, it’s no surprise that the number of users who are expected to use their device to make online purchases will jump 26% by 2017. This opens up a whole new segment of the population as potential customers for your brand, the people who prefer to browse the web from their mobile device(s).

Even if you already have a well-established website, optimizing the site for mobile access requires adhering to some parameters that many business owners do not take into account, thereby hurting their company. Users are repelled by sites that are not well suited to mobile platforms and have lacklustre performance, loading issues, reduced navigation speed and other issues. The design of the mobile site needs to be taken into account before losing revenue and potential customers due to negative experiences when visitors access to your site from a mobile device.

An important factor that needs to be kept in mind when planning the mobile site is the discrepancy between the screen sizes of traditional computers and the newer mobile devices. These range from smaller smart phones with 3.5 inch screens to 9.5 inch tablet screens.Because of this, you have to make sure that you:

Check your site to make sure it loads and performs well in the most common mobile devices of different screen sizes.

Adapt all content so that the maximum size of the mobile website does not exceed 20 kilobytes.

Optimize your content for faster loading time; the easiest way to do this is by reducing the number of images on your mobile site. Visitors will appreciate fast loading times.

W3C Mobile: This tool allows you to evaluate the level of Validation of the mobile version of your website. The aim of this application is to show you if your web site is user friendly, just enter the address of your website and once the analysis is performed the tool will indicate via icons and colours the state of your website for different mobile devices.

These are just a few tips and strategies to keep in mind when making your current site more mobile user friendly. Depending on the nature of your company, a well optimized mobile site will play a big part in attracting more customers and generating more revenue. It will also give you an edge over your competitors. In today’s technological era, most businesses could greatly benefit from an optimized mobile site.

Is your website design ready for mobile devices?

If you need to “mobilize” you website, you should work with a professional mobile web design agency such as “Xperience Marketing Solutions”, an award winning agency servicing companies in USA, Europe and Latin America for the past 15 years. Currently with local marketing agents in The Treasure Coast, Palm Beaches and all South Florida.

www.XperienceMarketingSolutions.com

Top 10 Reasons to hire an Online Marketing Agency.

You may think that your business does not require a professional social media marketing team. However, Americans spend on average, over an hour a day on the internet, not counting the time they spend accessing social media from mobile devices. With all the time that is spent consuming information online, it’s the perfect opportunity for businesses to gain exposure and get consumers interested in them. Social media and web marketing is one of the most underestimated tools by business owners, who take an over simplified approach to it, which limits their success. The truth is, online marketing should be handled just like traditional marketing, and it is best done by experts who can aid your business in reaching its biggest potential. The following are 10 reasons why you should hire an Online Marketing Agency.

 

1. Your company is ready to go to the next level.                                                                      When you have a team of professionals working to attract and get the attention of as many people in your target demographic, this ensures that your company is being seen by the people who matter the most-potential customers.

2. You don’t have the time or knowledge to plan and implement online strategy.                 Online marketing is much more than creating a social media page for your business, uploading a few pictures and information about your product and calling it a day. Like we mentioned above, attracting the right attention is key, and this is only achieved by a professional, defined online strategy designed to optimize your company’s reach.

3. Your competitors have better online exposure than your company does.                           People like convenience. You might have more competitive prices, or a higher quality product. However, if your competitor’s website is the first one that pops up when you search for that product, and your site is buried five pages of results back, most of your potential customers are going to have no idea you even exist. When you pay for professional search engine optimization, you ensure your page is always at the top-and highly visible.

4. Outdated look and corporate image                                                                              Nowadays, many people will check out a businesses’ website or social media site to find out more about them before they even visit the location, because it’s only a click away. We humans are visually orientated creatures. There’s a reasons multinational corporations spend billions of dollars and hire an entire team of designers to create their logo. Conveying the right emotions and having the right look for your site works wonders for your business. That means keeping up with the current trends, so no flashy graphics and comic sans font inundated pages like those in the nineties’. A professional team will know exactly how to design your page so it beckons people, rather than repel them.

5. You are working with an unreliable “freelancer”                                                                 When you retain services from a digital or online marketing agency, you will have access to a professional web design team. Multiple creative and professional minds working on your behalf which 9 out of 10 times proves to be better a business decision than just hiring a freelance.  If you lose the freelance your project stops and you have to waste time finding another person to take over the project. Making that decision in a hurry may lead to a bigger mistake and a bigger waste of time and money for your company. With a digital agency you have a design team, so even if you lose one designer, the rest of the team will keep working on your project. They will know exactly how to proceed and you will not have to waste time going over every little detail with the next freelancer.

6. Poor design and maintenance on your website                                                                Websites should not only be attractive, but functional. Nothing turns people off faster than a labyrinth of outdated links with illegible text and ambiguous information. A properly designed website has all the information someone might require about the product or service, is a user friendly format, and is frequently updated and easy to navigate. Remember, consumers like convenience! They will not spend time going looking through your entire site to find the address for your company. They will simply go to another page.

7. No clue about eCRM and opt-in email regulations                                                              Those without a background in marketing and sales might have no clue about CRM, much less eCRM. Even if a business owner recognizes its importance, it requires time and effort to implement and maintain and really, who has time for that while running a business? Better leave it to the professionals in eCRM solutions. The same goes for email regulations. Opt-in email marketing is a really useful tool for businesses, but being unaware of the regulations can land an unsuspecting business owner in legal woes. The best way to avoid the hassle is to turn it all over to a knowledgeable agency.

8.   Lack of professional social media exposure

With literally millions of pages on social media for all types of products and services, it’s easy for your company to get lost in the pack. Social media users are bombarded with advertisements for pages every day, and they ignore most of them. They only want to interact with truly interesting and engaging pages. Managing a page that stands out and really piques the user’s interest is no small task, and is quite time consuming. Leave it to a social media marketing team.

9.      No presence on search engines and directories

Going back to what was previously said; even a well designed, functional and attractive website will never be seen by anyone if it is not in the top two pages of results when people look for similar products on a search engine. Most people are unaware that the first few sites that pop up in the results on a search engine do not do so by chance; there are clearly defined ways to optimize search engine results. If you don’t have a clue about this, don’t worry, a professional agency will.

10. You have very limited online presence                                                                                Maybe your business has website, and even a Facebook or Twitter. That should be enough right? Most of the time, it’s not. The truth is that new social media sites are popping up every day, and each one attracts a different segment of the population. Sites like Linkdin, Pinterest, Tumblr, all attract different kinds of users and focus on different kind of content. Having some or all of these pages will allow you to reach segments of potential customers you never knew you had. But each one must be managed differently to get the most out of it. If this sounds like a huge time commitment or confusing, that’s because it is. Online marketing requires all this and more. Still think you can do it yourself? Do your company and yourself a favor and hire an online marketing agency.