Do I need a mobile website?  It started out as a trend.  We know retail sites are seeing incredibly high traffic increase.  But what about the service industry? If your business garners emergency or urgent services, you risk losing business, already.  All service businesses should not ignore mobile because use is on the rise across all industries.  As mobile use rises continually a mobile ready website needs to be in your plan.

Statistics tell us mobile phone web users are “task oriented”.  Their searching is more likely to convert to action.  Mobile use varies on preference and also their bandwidth phone service plan.  Mobile websites are highly optimized for download speed, using far less bandwidth than your full website.  If a user’s preference is a mobile site, they likely will bounce off your full website in search of a lean mobile site.  Having a mobile presence is about improving the customer experience.  Don’t give a visitor a reason to leave once they have found you.

I have found the best course of action gives the control to the user.  Your mobile website is triggered when a visitor lands on your full website via a mobile device.  A link to view your full website is prominently displayed, and also a link to your mobile website is on your full website, should they choose to go back and forth.

While staying on the cutting edge and following every new device can be very expensive (thousands, tens of thousands) to maintain there are several other approaches far less costly, especially for website owners with small websites (20 pages and less).  It’s time.