The other day I was meeting a business colleague at a Starbucks in downtown Vancouver (We’ll call her Suzy). Suzy specified the meeting location and when I got to our meeting spot (10 minutes early, of course!) Suzy was no where to be found and there wasn’t a Starbucks in site! So, what did I do?
I yanked my iphone from my bag and:
1. Used Google maps to find the closest Starbucks according to my locations. Then I utilized the GPS function to plan a route to the Starbucks.
2. Since Suzy isn’t a regular client, I didn’t have her phone number in my iphone. I used Safari on my iphone to find her company’s website and then located the contact page. I called her office and got her cell phone number from the receptionist.
Tech savvy, aren’t I?
True, I may be ahead of many people in Vancouver technology-wise but I doubt if I will be for long. Mobile phones have the ability to deliver specific information immediately upon demand. With the 2010 Olympics approaching businesses will need to become much more mobile accessible if they want to be ‘found’ in the future.
What I noticed Suzy could have done better to help me find her on my mobile phone:
- There were 4 companies with similar names to hers indexed on Google. A bit of Search Engine Optimization would help her get to the top of the list. We offer search engine optimization services (in case you were interested, haha).
- Her site was visible on my iphone but it didn’t have a custom mobile website built in. These days when a mobile phone hits a website they can automatically be directed to a mobile-friendly version of your website. Usually this is a pared down version of your current website. It has call to action items like: find us on Google Maps, contact us via email, contact us via phone and a general service list. In the case of a restaurant, it might give reservation information, a map and a menu sample. In Suzy’s case, I had to browse through two pages to find her contact information and scroll around the screen. On a mobile phone? Go ahead, check out october17media.com. See how pretty it looks in your mobile browser? Don’t you want a website that has no horizontal scrolling when people are checking you out on their mobile phone?
Want to see how your website does on a mobile phone? Type your website address in at the following site to get a review:
Mobile phone MobileOK Beta checker:
http://validator.w3.org/mobile/
Mobile phone emulator:
http://mtld.mobi/emulator.php
Got questions or need your site to be mobile phone accessible? We can help with mobile phone websites.
Not sure if you need it?
If you’re a restaurant, hotel or sell products online then you need a mobile phone accessible website. They actually are quite inexpensive and worth the investment considering the future potential and accessibility.
Tags: Internet, iphone, mobile phones, Web Site Accessibility, Web Site Optimization
