Mobile Friendly Website Musts

To truly have a mobile friendly website requires a few best practices. I can think of 3 right offhand.

1. Displays well on smart phones and mobile tablet devices

This means you have buttons where they can find the information they’re looking for right away. The buttons are easy to push even for people with fat thumbs or fat fingers.

It doesn’t require any “pinch and expand”. If the user has to pinch and expand this is a bad mobile site experience. Many times they’ll just click away.

2. Click to call

Your phone number must be click to call enabled. When they see your phone number displayed on any of your pages they must be able to just click on it to automatically dial and talk with your customer service people or salespeople.

3. GPS and office info

You must have the address and your hours of operation listed. And the user should be able to just click a button and open up their GPS to be able to drive right to your store.

There are some other things you can do as well but right now these are the basics for having a mobile friendly site with a fantastic user experience.

Mobile apps are a whole separate discussion but are very important.

The coolest thing about mobile apps for your business is you can send “push messages”. You can think of “push messages” like text messages because they operate the same way from the user’s perspective.

The best part, all those who’ve downloaded your business’ mobile app will receive your push messages. These get opened and read 97% of the time within 15 minutes.

You can update your customers and fans with important VIP events, coupons, and topics of interest they’ll love.

I recommend every business have a mobile app because it’s that important. If you look at the numbers over 80% of people interact with mobile apps whereas less than 20% of people are heavily involved in mobile search and using their mobile browsers.

So clearly mobile apps are the now and the future to reach people on mobile devices.

This is my friend Dmitriy who I met at the Leverage Summit in Austin TX in February 2012.

He is an expert in building websites with a positive user experience and also delves in mobile friendly website optimization and design. He can also help with mobile app development.

His website is PurposeInspiredMarketing.com.

Is there another best practice for mobile friendly websites you’ve read which wasn’t mentioned here?

Have you made your business online presence mobile friendly yet?

Leave your comments below because I vow to read and respond to them.