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Websites For Mobile Phones

Adapting web pages for Smartphones, PDAs and Ultra-Mobile PCs

A separate mobile site is required in order to deliver an optimized experience for mobile users. Customers who are surfing on a mobile device have different needs and requirements, so to force-feed them the same content as that displayed on the traditional site is a recipe for disaster. The following images show a good example of this principle. The Best Buy mobile site displays only two functions (Product Search and Find A Store) – big difference.

If you consider the most common phones available, they can be categorized on the basis of screen size -- give or take a few pixels:

*       128 x 160 pixels, 176 x 220 pixels, 240 x 320 pixels, 320 x 480 pixels

Knowing these screen dimensions helps you optimize some of your content, however it's best to keep the shape and style of your site as minimal and linear as possible. There is no mouse on a mobile phone -- only an up-down feature -- so you can't demand that users jump around the page.

A strong mobile presence is one that gives mobile web-surfers quick access to the kind of information they’re likely to be looking for on the go:

·         Phone numbers

·         Directions

·         Contact information.

·         Ready information about products and pricing for the benefit of consumers doing comparison-shopping on the go is also a boon.

There are three basic ways to deliver information to a mobile phone:

1.      With normal WebPages that have been optimized for the search engines.

2.      Web pages designed for mobile phones.

3.      Applications (apps). Most importantly, businesses need to attract and serve customers searching for them on Google and other search engines, something an app alone won’t do.

Special Mobile Web Design Software Is Need For Regular Cell Phones

  • Need to be able to see and comfortably read all of the text on a page like Blogger (http://go.blogger.com)

·         Make sure Images are not awkwardly placed.

·         Make your important links easy to find & click on from main page or main category.

·         Limit scrolling page to see valuable content.

·         Limit images that cause slow load times

Applications “apps”
As a general rule, businesses should create a mobile-friendly website before they venture into the world of apps. Beyond ease of use, an app lets you tap into a smartphone’s features including:

·         Built-in cameras

·         GPS receivers that can pinpoint the user’s location

·         Ability to display rich-media content.

·         Allows really rich graphics,  animation and movies

·         Once a user has gone to the trouble of downloading a businesses’ app, its icon on their device serves as a persistent ad.

Moreover, Instead of starting from scratch, it’s better to focus on making sure that your business is integrated with apps that are already popular, like Foursquare, Yelp, and Google’s maps.

  • Android Application Market is over 100,000,
  • BlackBerry App World recently announced a collection of over 15,000

Apps are native applications that run on a smartphone, here are the benefits:

·         Apps promise the best user experience on smartphones’ small screens, because their interfaces are tailored to the devices they run on.

·         They can offer a smoother user experience and features that aren’t available on websites.

Developing a mobile application from scratch – or even hiring someone to do it for you – is an intensive, difficult and costly proposition. Depending on functionality apps cost between $5,000 and $250.000.

There is, however, a middle-ground alternative to costly custom development: a growing field of online app-making services with names like AppBreeder (App for IPhone) and BuildAnApp promise easy app development, at the expense of customizability (and, of course, a cut of the proceeds). As well, there’s a growing field of app platforms designed for specific industries – mall retail, for example – that vendors can customize for specific clients. Meanwhile, mobile websites offer the reverse equation: they’re easier to develop across platforms, and increasingly offer platform-specificity, but can’t always match an app’s ease-of-use or feature set.

 

SmartPhone App Benefits

Whether or not we asked for it, we live in the age of the app. There are more than 100 million Twitter users worldwide. They tend to be slightly older than Facebooks 500 million users (most studies say average Twitter users are in their 30s). They are mostly found in urban markets where people are likely to pack smartphones, but its reach grows every day.

·         Deliver user friendly pages.

·         Better search engine optimization capabilities

·         Web pages mostly render correctly on the smaller smartphone screen,

·         Content is right there on the main page

·         Pages can be a little more graphical because transfer data rates have increased over the last couple of years.

·         Scrolling is much easier & quicker on a SmartPhone.

It is a fine balance to have just the right amount of information on the page without costing users a lot of bandwidth, being visually appealing, and not causing a need for too much scrolling.

SEO & Smart Phones & A Study By Forrester Research

·         1/2 of small business owners own a smartphone.

·         Only 35% or the general public own smartphones

·         Small business owners are becoming early adopters in mobile technologies.

·         Small business is using places like Facebook Places.

·         Increasing demand for interaction between business and mobile phone users.

·         Small businesses are relooking at there websites to see whats needed and changed to stay ahead of the curve.

Some of the Websites that are smartphone-friendly include:

 Set Up A Blog On Your Website.

www.wordpress.org

Social Networking sites like Twitter & Facebook are taylor made for marketing your products or services to cell phones and smartphone users.

From a business perspective, Twitter is especially useful for three tasks:

·         Listening and learning about your target market,

·         Promoting products or services

·         Reaching out to customers.

Google is indexing Twitter & Facebook pages now that no-follow tags have been removed.

The maximum number of words has been lifted and now entire articles can be submitted.

Type in “snowmobile ramps” into twitters internal search engine result is a entire article that has a static URL created by bit.ly generated url which reduces the size of the url to be syndicated and redirected by a search engine friendly 301 permanent redirect. Even individual tweets have started appearing within Google search results. Twitter is a fast and very efficient way to generate back links to your website.

Example Of Twitter Page Ranking In Google
Discount Ramps

Example Rankings From Facebook Listings

Santa Ana Ca Tennis Court Lighting

Middle East Tennis Court Lighting

Tennis Court Lighting Japan
Discount Ramps

Sign Up For A Twitter Account
http://www.twitter.com

Twitter Offers Feed Submittal Service Twitter Feeds
Join www.hellotxt.com
On twitter home page click on networks button at top of page to see feed options.

Get Your API Key Here:
http://hellotxt.com/dashboard/applications/TwitterFeed
Click enable this application that will generate api user key.

Sing Up With twitter feeds
http://twitterfeed.com/
Click on Networks on home page to add your feed automatically to dozens of social media networks.

Link Your Page To Your Twitter Account

You can now export your Facebook Page updates to Twitter. Click here to enable this feature.

This article was published on Wednesday 16 February, 2011.
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