Local businesses should have mobile versions of their websites

Web browsing on mobile phones is up, up, up! Don’t believe me? Look around and notice how many people in your life have iPhones, Android phones, and even iPads. I could take the time to Google a study that shows that mobile phone browsing is up x percent but we both know that it’s true.

Naturally, your customers are finding you on their phones. That is, if you are findable on a mobile browser. If your website runs on Flash, then your site will not work on an Apple device. And it won’t work on the average Android device either. If you’re not sure if your site runs on Flash, you can usually tell by looking at your site–does it have a lot of fancy animation? When you click on links within your site, does the URL in your browser change, or does it stay on yoursite.com when as you navigate?

If it’s a fancy site or the URL isn’t changing, you’re probably running Flash. Even if your site is not on Flash, there’s a very good chance that it hasn’t been optimized for the tiny screens and slow connections of a mobile phone. I have this recurring problem where I’m in a taxi cab or out on the street with my friends and we’re deciding where to eat dinner. So we want to look up the menu of a nearby restaurant before hopping in a cab. The restaurant’s website either doesn’t load at all or it’s hard to find what I need (the menu, the prices, the hours, and the address).

It’s not just restaurants that need mobile versions of their websites. It’s almost any business where a customer may need to visit your location. And really, it’s almost any business at all, because people are using their phones to do research all the time.

The bottom line: if your website doesn’t run well on a smartphone browser, you’re either a) losing potential customers or b) annoying customers because they have to do a lot of extra legwork to track down what they need.

I started another company to solve this problem, and while I’m targeting the Chicago area for now, I’m happy to take on clients anywhere. I’m offering affordable hosting and design of simple mobile websites for businesses that need them. Contact me for more information.