And there’s good reason for that. According to a recent report from Nielsen, two-thirds of the folks that acquired a new mobile phone in between December 2011 and February 2012 chose a smartphone over a feature phone.

What does that mean for your business? Well, you must take steps to ensure that your website and other online content is optimized for the mobile audience!

But what is actually involved with building a mobile website that will engage your audience? Here are 5 keys to help you do that successfully.

Recognize the Difference Between Mobile-Ready and Mobile-Optimized

There are some tools out there that make the process of building a mobile website an after-thought. They may take ALL of the content on your existing website, put it in a mobile-ready layout, and then be done with it.

However, while that may give you a website that looks okay on a smartphone, will it properly provide your mobile audience with the experience that they desire and need? No.

Trying to fit all of your content into a mobile website will result in an experience that is over-crowded, hard to navigate, and frustrating.

The better solution is to truly treat your mobile website as a separate entity! One that is specifically designed to provide benefits to the growing mobile audience.

Analyze Your Users’ Needs

Content: Prioritize and Simplify

When a company builds a desktop website, they often devote many hours to the writing, reviewing, and re-writing portion of the project. And rightfully so. We recognize that we only have a limited amount of time to tell our story to a website visitor.

Because of that, we may fall in love with our text.

However, if we simply take all of the text from our regular website and paste it onto our mobile website, we may be harming the effect that our story could have on the mobile audience.

When building a mobile website, take the time to analyze your content. It may not be easy to do, but taking the time to simplify your message to ensure that that mobile users see the most important items may provide big benefits.

Include Simplified Forms to Generate Leads

One of the best ways for a marketer to demonstrate the effectiveness of their desktop website is to show how many leads it has generated.

The same can be said for a mobile website.

Rather than just displaying text, images, and videos, include lead-generation forms that allow for the mobile user to engage with your company.

This may include registration forms for White Papers, eBooks, webinars, or even just a simple “Contact Us” form.

One key to doing that successfully is to reduce the amount of fields and questions that you ask users to fill out. For most people, data entry on a mobile device may not be their favorite time of the day. Thus, trim down the amount of information that you require from that audience in order to maximize your lead generation opportunities.

This may mean that you only ask for their Email Address and perhaps one or two questions to learn more about them.

Provide Links to the Desktop Website

After you’ve built your mobile website, you will want to add logic to your desktop website to automatically direct mobile users to the proper site.

However, some people may prefer the familiarity with the full website. Or perhaps they are looking for something a bit deeper down inside of your content library that isn’t accessible on your mobile website.

By simply including a link to view the regular website, you will be providing a better experience for that audience as well.

I hope that you find these tips helpful as you seek to reach the growing mobile audience.

If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know.

Also, I’d love for you to give our mobile website builder a try!

Sign Up for a 14-Day Free Trial Today!

Below are the slides that were presented. I hope that you find them helpful!

During the webinar, we covered topics such as:

• Options for creating and designing QR Codes
• Best Practices for Implementing QR Codes onto print and mail materials
• Tools for building mobile websites
• How to make money from QR Codes

In case you missed it, or would simply like to check out the slides again, we’ve posted the content online.  We hope that you find it helpful!

The answer can be Yes… However, best practices for implementing QR Codes into print and mail efforts must be followed.

In this video with What They Think’s Cary Sherburne, I had the opportunity to share some of my tips and tricks. I hope that you find them helpful.

During the webinar, “Print + Mobile: Understanding QR Codes”, we will seek to provide answers to many of the questions that people currently have about QR Codes.

We will cover items such as:

• The importance of reaching the mobile audience
• Best practices for using QR Codes
• When should they be used? When should QR Codes not be used?
• Options for creating mobile-optimized websites
• Case Studies and Inspiration

Space is limited for this webinar! If you are interested, please register today here >>

The webinar will take start at 2PM Eastern Time.

While the numbers and charts can be inspiring, they can also be intimidating! If you are currently the owner of a lot of content on the web, it may seem like an impossible project to become “mobile-ready”.

However, here are three basic steps that companies can take to effectively reach their mobile audience:

• Mobile apps can be good for business, but focus on building a mobile-optimized website first: Think about how you search for content on your phone. While you may certainly rely on some apps to access information, advancements in technology have made mobile websites more powerful and better than ever.
• Your entire corporate website does not need to be brought over to the mobile version: I’m not implying that each and every page and blog post that you’ve created for your corporate website is not valuable. However, you should not feel the need to convert everything before you launch your mobile website. Focus on mobile-optimizing the content that will solve the direct and immediate needs of most of your mobile audience.
• Do not just rely on the “build it and they will come” method: Whether it’s by using QR Codes on your printed materials or spending time ensuring that you’re following mobile SEO best practices, make it as easy as possible for the mobile audience to find your content.