This is a guest post by Grant Landram, the founder of FreshMuse, a web design and development agency here in Seattle that specializes in WordPress development for desktop and mobile devices.
As a web design and development agency, FreshMuse works with businesses to optimize their entire web presence, including the experience their users have with their site on mobile phones, iPads, and other wireless devices. The reason we focus so much on mobile is that the mobile experience is becoming vital to every business’s strategy.
According to MobiThinking’s 2011 report “25 percent of mobile web users are mobile-only“, meaning they only interact with the web on their mobile device. This means if your site isn’t optimized for the web, you’re creating frustration among a large portion of your users, and maybe even losing them as customers.
When users do interact with your site on their mobile phones, there exists a unique opportunity to leverage their phones using easy, mobile-friendly markup. They’re on their phone, and not their computer, so you can tap into their phone and SMS capabilities to do some unique things that can benefit your business.
For example, let’s say you run a pizza place and you have a text message marketing campaign where you encourage your patrons to text “PIZZA” to 68398 to receive special deals. Normally someone would have to pull out their phone, type out 68398, and write the message. However, on your mobile website, you can embed a mobile-friendly link that will prompt a text message for them! Reducing extra steps in the opt-in process means less friction, more opt-ins, and more business!
Here’s the code that you can copy and paste to use on your own mobile site:
Link that will prompt a text message:
<a href=”sms:68398″>Text Pizza to 68398 to get our updates!</a>
Designing for the mobile experience is becoming more important as more people use their phones and mobile devices to interact with the web. Staying ahead of the curve with mobile websites and mobile-friendly markup will ensure easy experiences and happy customers!
