With the growing numbers in mobile phone and smart phone users, it is a must that you have a mobile website so that your customers could easily reach you. Not anymore is it a trend but it is becoming a necessity to have a mobile website apart from you main website. Nowadays most of the companies have realized the importance of having a mobile site and are seeking web developers to create sites for them. As a web designing and developing company it will be very useful for you to know on what involves on building a mobile website. The following tips will give you a basic knowledge on what features that you need to include on a mobile website.
Considering the amount of space is important that you include the most important information on top of the page. This will make it easier to convey the message to the mobile user. Most importantly include your company logo in a customized size. Navigation should be focused on up and down and left to right navigation should be minimal. The best way to avoid left to right navigation is by adding your content in a single column layout. It is advisable not to use tables. But if you have to use them make sure it is no more than two columns and avoid merging rows and columns.
The content that you include on the website should be easy to read and navigate. Select brief descriptions if you need to include any. Make sure you select the proper font size so that the user does not need to zoom the page to read the content. When building a mobile website you will not require special coding so you can use XML or XHTML to code the site. Basic coding such as HTML and CSS can be used as well. Make sure you carefully select target keyword to optimise as you cannot input much content. Make sure to include the keywords on title tags, description meta tags, heading tags and file names.
When using images and graphics make sure that you use as little of them as possible. If not the mobile site would take ages to load. You can include .jpeg .gif or .png formats when adding images as they are light in weight. Make sure to compress the images so that it would not zoom out. When selecting a style for a mobile website make sure the maximum page size to be 20Kb and if possible try to make it less than 10Kb, so that the user is not charged too much when browsing the mobile site. Any website needs links to be placed, but for mobile websites it would be hard since there is no back button. Therefore make sure all pages are linked to other pages. You can also place a link that would generate a call. So that the user can get in touch with you and get further details about the products and services.
Farhan Fawzer is a Sri Lankan SEO Specialist and Online Marketing Consultant.