What Can I do to Make My Website Available on Mobile Devices?
There are several answers to this question, the most popular are: map listings, mobile apps, .mobi website, and sponsored listings. These are considered the best in delivering the results in terms of calls, email inquiries, sales and return on marketing budget. Results will vary depending on your industry and marketing budget, of course. We’ll start with the least cost: map listing.
MAP LISTING
The least cost will be placing more emphasis on your map listings i.e. Google Places and Yahoo/Bing Maps. By elaborating on your ad and utilizing its tools and services, your business should get some visibility on search engines and GPS related mobile apps. Map listings are used to generate and displayed on mobile apps.
MOBI WEBSITE
There are already online businesses that provide mobile web sites that you can build right online – but personally, I’m holding off on this technology because there is no established standard adopted by the industry or Internet as a whole, as of yet. Not all mobile OS and browsers are alike although they can all read HTML. Which means we can build tiny html web pages for your .mobi web site but I don’t think that’s the intent of the technology. Therefore, I’m waiting for a more solid standard solution for mobile devices before jumping in.
In the meantime, placing more emphasis on your local map accounts will bring in more traffic to your physical business and website. To get higher rankings, have your customers give you reviews directly on the map listings. For higher visibility, right now you can pay Google an extra $25 per month and it will have a yellow flag next to it bringing more attention to your listings.
Local Map Listings is where search programs are headed – which is the first stop for all mobile devices.
You might also want to secure a .mobi TLD domain name. Why not?
SPONSORED LISTINGS
Another name for Sponsored Listings is Pay-Per-Click. The name says it all. You buy a keyword, now you can bid on how high your ranking – the highest bidder will be number 1 in the search results, second to the highest bidder will be number 2 and so on and so on. A person using a search engine will use the key phrase or keyword and your ad will be displayed at the top; if they click on your link your account will be charged based on your bid amount, a one-time cost per 24-hours per computer or unique IP address. So if I were to click on your link (sponsored ad), you will only be charged once even if I keep clicking on it over and over, the pay-per-click system will only charge you once because it is coming from the same computer within the same 24-hour period.
