Is your site Mobile Accessible?
As if website owners didn’t have enough to deal with, SEO (search engine optimization), staying up on which search engines are using which formulas, what’s working and not working, browser friendly sites that cater to each and all browsers, and much more. Website owners should now prepare for m-commerce.
Retail web sites that cater to technologically hip and sophisticated shoppers should consider preparing the sites for the first wave of shopping from cell phones and other mobile devices, warns David Jilk, CEO of Xaffire Inc., a provider of web site performance monitoring technology. “This Christmas could be the year that people start to buy their gifts on mobile devices,� he tells InternetRetailer.com. “If a retailer’s brand is one of being hip, it may want to begin to support m-commerce, because if it succeeds this Christmas, their mobile shoppers will be back,� he says.
A growing number of young consumers are using cell phones like the Sidekick II from T-Mobile U.S.A. Inc., while technologically savvy older consumers are brandishing Blackberry mobile devices, and each group has the capability to shop online from their handhelds more easily than ever before.
“Sites need to conform to mobile usage, because a mobile device user may have to work hard to find information fields,� Jilk says. Most web sites are not designed to work well with mobile devices. Website owners need to work on making their sites more friendly to smaller display screens and other limited web-browsing capabilities.
Retailers will want to provide lightweight versions of their web sites, with briefer product descriptions and possibly lighter images, for handheld users, says John Rozen, chief operating officer of Mirror Image Internet Inc., a provider of content delivery solutions for online merchants. “Shopping on portable devices is coming—it’s a year and a half away at the most,� Rozen says.
Other options, Jilk says, are to reduce the number of pages in the navigation and checkout process for mobile device users and to let m-commerce shoppers place items in a shopping cart and finish the purchase when they get to a conventional computer.
“I wouldn’t suggest retailers put a major investment this year into making lightweight sites for this Christmas, but if they cater to high-tech shoppers, lightweight features could produce a valuable image,� Jilk says.
