Is Your Website Mobile Ready for the Professional Tradesmen?

by | Mar 5, 2013

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Manufacturers are trying different ways to get and stay in front of the professional tradesman, and your website is probably one of the first places they will look for info. Is it mobile friendly?

I recently read a post by one of my mentors, Michael Gass, on ways to test your site that I thought I’d share with you. Good info.

In preparation for new business opportunities, it is important that your company’s website be mobile ready.

The number of smartphones in use worldwide has now broken the 1 billion mark, according to Strategy Analytics. Only 15% of companies have a mobile optimized site even though Google estimates that there will be more Web traffic via mobile, than through PCs this year. According to a survey conducted for Compuware, 40% of users have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience.

You’ll want prospects to have an easy experience learning about your agency or accessing your agency’s blog content via their mobile device.

Here’s a collection of best practices, white papers and case studies for your review and to help get you started:

There’s nothing like first hand experience so check out your company’s website on your mobile device. Sig Ueland, contributing editor for Practical Ecommerce, pulled together a list of 19 tools for testing your site’s mobile readiness. You can use any of these following 12 for free:

  1. Gomez
  2. MobiReady
  3. W3C mobileOK Checker
  4. GoMoMeter
  5. iPhone Tester
  6. iPad Peek
  7. Screenfly
  8. Mobile Phone Emulator
  9. The Responsinator
  10. Matt Kersley’s Responsive Design Testing
  11. Opera Mini Simulator
  12. iPhoney

You can make your agency’s website mobile ready until you can create the mobilized version of the site.

If you have a WordPress site, you can use plugins like MobilePress and Mippin which will automatically enable mobile users on your website to access a mobile version of it. Until the mobile version of Fuel Lines has been developed, I’m using another WordPress plugin called WPtouch to mobilize this site. There are also a number of online services such as Mobilize Today that will have your website ready for mobile in a matter of minutes.

Click on the following link for Sig’s complete list and description of each: 19 Tools to Test your Site for Mobile Devices

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