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If you have a web presence, then its time to start thinking about your mobile web presence as well! If you already have a mobile website set up, congratulations, otherwise here are some suggestions. First of all, let me start off with a few stats (see textually.com) to convince you of the importance of targeting mobile web users:
- Over one trillion text messages were sent via mobile phones worldwide in 2005.
- One billion mobile phones sold in 2006 (812 million sold in 2005)
- The mobile phone is the most common electronics device in the world and considered the fourth window of content after television, the big screen and the personal computer.
So you may think that a mobile version of your website, is just a nuisance for a small segment of your user base, but in reality it is going to be a large portion of your traffic in the future. So here are some suggestions to get you started:
- WAP-enabled site - Take a few of your most important pages on your site and set up a mobile version of them. Basically this boils down to stripping down the UI on them, so they fit comfortable on a mobile device, and coding them in WML, which is basically a simplifed version of HTML
- SMS Marketing - Start collecting mobile phone numbers! Add this to your registration page, add a checkbox to opt-in to mobile marketing and start pushing out text messages to subscribers
- Discounts - everybody loves a discount. Many companies are pushing offline buyers online with discounts (Get GAP jeans for 20% if you buy online)...same concept applies for pushing users to your mobile site. Offer discounts that can only be redeemed by being received on their mobile device.
And, of course, if you need any help with any of this, I'd be happy to be of assistance. ;)
Sincerely,
Kalen Jordan
kalenj@gmail.com
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About the author
Kalen Jordan is a freelance web developer, based out of San Diego, CA, with 5+ years of experience in PHP/MySQL and related open source technologies.
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