They have the advantage that they don’t require any clicking on the part of the user, which leads to wait times while pages load. In other words, web users are a finicky and impatient bunch; everything you can do to streamline your website and make navigation seamless (or not required at all) is a smart move.
Mobile site are perhaps the most egregious offenders today. This is especially true when the mobile site of a small business isn’t really a mobile site at all—just the regular site being displayed on a painfully small smartphone screen.
When sites won’t load
I ran into this problem recently when my husband and I were out on the town and I decided to check the Monday night specials at one of our favorite restaurants. The site flat out wouldn’t load. Fortunately for the restaurant owner, we like the place enough that we went anyway.
Many others, however, don’t have that kind of loyalty, especially the prospects who owners desperately need to get through the doors.
Here’s a simple tip: Design your web presence with your least loyal, most flighty customers/prospects in mind. If it works for them, it will work for everyone else too.
There are some social currents that just won’t be turned back and the trend toward mobile is one of those. In fact, it’s not difficult to imagine some businesses designing their mobile sites first and then adapting them to a larger screen format.
Get those walk-ins
If your small business relies on customers walking through the front door—as in the retail, hospitality, or food industries—don’t leave your mobile site up to chance. If you designed your site more than a few years ago, there’s a great chance that you don’t have a separate mobile site that renders differently than your regular site.
Here’s a homework assignment for you: Navigate to every corner of your mobile site and also have friends and family members do the same thing. Keep a critical eye focused on how easily you are able to navigate and how quickly pages load. Be sure that your landing pages work in the mobile world.
Remember that you’re familiar with your site. Can prospects who come to your website for the first time while using their mobile devices understand it, get their questions answered and do the actions you would like them to do? Be sure to have some people who have never visited your website among your testers.
Go into analysis
Finally, if you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your site—or you seldom review the statistics—get on board. You’ll find out how many visitors are accessing your website through mobile devices, along with a lot more critical information you can use as you optimize your site.
This article was originally published by Susan Solovic
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