Everyone has mobile phones, iPhones, Androids, iPads, Tablets. We all have them, from our young children in middle school to our grandparents.  According to Experian, 87% of Americans have mobile phones and the Human Factors International (HFI) found that 43% of them use their browser to access the internet on their phone.

Why Most Sites Don’t Work Well on Mobile Devices Most desktop websites don’t work the same on your mobile phone! For one, your phone has a much smaller screen, also, the speed of your mobile website is going to be much slower than with a desktop website. That being said, no two people are the same, so why would we think mobile and desktop users would be the same?

Google Analytics Doesn’t Lieresponsive_web_design_500x303 If you want to find out just how many of your customers are looking at your website via mobile phone you can look at your Google Analytics. What you are going to want to do is to compare the amount of visits your website has had in total compared to visits from mobile users only. It would be best to compare the number of visits over a month through a year for the best comparison. If say you had a total of 46,820 visits through the whole month and 4,670 of those were of mobile phone users then that is 10%. 10% of the visits your companies website was viewed via a mobile phone. You have to ask yourself at that time, is 10% good enough to build a separate website solely for mobile users?

Solutions It seems clear to me that most company websites should have a separate mobile website. According to the Nielson Net Ratings the average Internet session lasts for 56 minutes, the average mobile session is less than five minutes. The mobile user needs to be able to get to what they need and quickly. Which typically can’t happen using a desktop website on there mobile phone. The mobile phone user is not just ‘surfing around’, he is looking for something in particular, he knows what he wants and wants to find it! 68% of mobile users said if they knew a business had a mobile website they would visit that instead of the desktop website on their phone, according to (HFI)

Less Is More, Copy Is King When developing your mobile website remember two things when creating the content, ‘less is more’ and ‘copy is king’. Breakdown all your copy into easy digestible segments. There is no reason to go crazy building a mobile website. Focus on the three most important reasons to visit your mobile website. Ease of use is critical, if the user has a hard time finding the simplest of things -take your phone number or a map- they are more likely to leave.

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