Things to consider while designing a Mobile Friendly website

With the emergence of high speed wireless network technologies and the increasing market penetration of mobile phones and tablets, the global advertising industry’s interest in using this medium as a means of marketing communication  is rising. Mobile marketing lets businesses get in front of customers on the devices they use the most.

The problems most companies are facing today in terms of mobile marketing are the lack of clear strategies that harmonize specific business needs and user interests. Most business websites are still designed with only a desktop or laptop computer in mind. When you view a typical business website on the browser of mobile device, it usually requires pinching, zooming and scrolling just to see what’s on the page. And interacting with such site via a touch-screen can be clumsy at best.

Internet access using mobile phones in United Kingdom reached 53% in 2013, this was more than double three years ago when it was 24% This growing number made companies look forward to use dedicated mobile gateway which can build interactive relationships by identifying consumers in terms of commercial behaviour, geographic location and social communication patterns.

While designing the mobile marketing strategy for the “The Candidate” I came across few things which should be considered while designing a company’s mobile friendly website.

1.       Responsive web design

A study from Google reveals that 74% people when they visited a mobile friendly website are more likely to return to that site in future. In order to improve the mobile web experience, Google also recommends creating smart-phone optimized websites. Additionally, Google prefers responsive web design because content that lives on one website and one URL is much easier for users to share, interact with, and link to than content that lives on a separate mobile site.  

2.       Single Column layout

A single-column structure tends to work best as it helps with managing limited space on the smaller screen, it also helps you easily scale between different device resolutions and flipping between portrait and landscape mode.

3.       Larger Chunkier buttons

When converting from a desktop to mobile site design, you have to revisit your “clickable” elements — links, buttons, menus, etc. — and make them “tappable.” While the desktop web lends itself well to links with small and precise active (clickable) areas, the mobile web requires larger, chunkier buttons that can be easily pressed with a thumb.

Make sure the text is also big enough to easily read on a mobile device. The screen size is much smaller than a PC or laptop, and people don’t want to have to hold the phone up to their nose just to read it.

      4.  Keep it Simple

A mobile website is most likely loading on a smartphone, which doesn’t have the same bandwidth as your computer at home. Adding extra images can take a while to download, significantly slowing down the load time of your page, and forcing your visitors to click the back button.

      5. Test your mobile friendly website

Make sure that the site you design will play nicely with the vast number of devices out there. iPhones, Androids, and yes, even BlackBerrys need to be tested with your new site, and don’t forget to test multiple browsers for each device.

     6. The F-Design

An eyetracking study shows 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:

·         Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.

·         Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.

·         Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.

 Contact info and social media plug-ins of your website should follow this pattern so that visitors don’t have to struggle to contact you or share your page on social media.

 In February’13, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced at the annual Mobile World Congress that number of active cell-phones will exceed the total world population by the next year. So, the simple and irrefutable prophecy is this: Mobile will power our internet lives in the near future

Hopefully this article provided some insight as you embark on a new mobile site design project. Be sure to leave any other tips you find useful when designing for the mobile web in the comments below.

Advantages of using #Instagram for your business

As visual content becomes more popular on Social Media, it also becomes increasingly important for brands to create and leverage. This shift to visual social media means that more and more businesses, big and small, are starting to communicate visually with their fans, followers and customers. Brands tend to have a fairly firm grasp on how to handle Facebook and Twitter, but Instagram still appears to challenge many companies.

Instagram, launched in October 2010 ,acquired by Facebook in April 2012. has around 55 million photos shared everyday. With over 75% of leading brands including Intel, American Express, Adidas originals, Red Bull and Starbucks already present on the platform, it is shaping the ways people interact not only with one-another, but also with brands and companies.

Many conversations are taking place on Instagram every day, and there’s a high chance that some of them mention your brand. Why not join in to shape the way your brand is seen and discussed on Instagram? Why not use Instagram to create meaningful interactions with your community and fine-tune your message to improve your brands’ visibility?

Here I am going to talk about some advantages of using Instagram as one of your social media tool for marketing.

1) Engagement 

Instagram registers 15 times more engagement than Facebook, for some brands it delivered 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter.  Instagram’s tagline is “Capture and Share the World’s Moments” so it is not how a brand is posting a photo, it is about using follower's photo on a brand's posts.

That Greek yogurt brand Chobani for example. In just a matter of weeks after joining Instagram a year and a half ago, Chobani (@Chobani) attracted a loyal clique of some 9,000 “Chobaniac” followers, which helped catapult the company from little-known to must-have. Chobani generated buzz about its brand on Instagram by encouraging followers to share their own pictures and holding weekly contests.

2) Building a Brand

Instagram can be highly resourceful tool for building a brand. Alice and Olivia’s designer Stacey Bendet is a shining example of how showcasing your point of view will connect you with your customers in a way unparalleled by any other medium.

According to Instagram, Bendet shares photos and videos that capture what she is seeing, feeling, or thinking in the moment and provides followers a genuine glimpse into her life of fashion and design and the inspiration behind her brand.

"That is really what building a brand is about, not just showing the product but showing the story all around it," Bendet says.

3) Networking

It’s easy to get caught up in all those pretty pictures, but like I mentioned before, there is more to Instagram than the photos. Instagram is like any other social network.

Social networks were created to help people meet new people and build relationships. Start interacting with a whole new network of interconnected people. In turn, you could gain followers, potential new customers, or new partners.

And it doesn’t end there. Instagram is connected to Facebook and Twitter. This makes it easy to connect all of your networks and use them interchangeably without too much stress.

Hastags are a great way to get your posts—and brand—noticed in the vast universe that is Instagram. Generally 80% of brand posts contain at least one hashtag, and the average brand post will have three.

Most brands are likely to use popular hashtags for their industry so their brand will come up often in people’s searches. However, some popular brands like Topshop and Gucci consistently use their brand hashtags to encourage users to adopt them in their posts, and they are not surprisingly among the top-10 most popular brands on Instagram.

Instagram offers an excellent opportunity for your brand to diversify your content as a means to broaden your online reach. If you haven’t created an Instagram account for your business, it’s best time to do it now.

Please do ask questions on the comment field below if you are still confused. I am also available on twitter @abhijitdasuk.