Saw a discussion today about optimizing your site for mobile and wanted to ask. Should you? What are the pros and cons of doing so? I just wanted to give you some of my thoughts here in the hopes that we can chat about it in the comments. Let’s do it!
Mobile sites cost money.
First, I want to show off our hits to Maryland Management’s website in regards to mobile users. I ran our analytics from July 1st through August 30th of 2011. The results are below:
The chart puts our mobile traffic at about 17%. From what I’ve read that is about average. Should you pay the money to optimize your site for 17% of the traffic? My answer is Yes and here’s why. 17% is as of August 2011. Mobile traffic will continue to increase and soon people will start to demand that your website is mobile optimized. That same philosophy is why I won’t watch anything on television that isn’t in High Definition (only exception… Big Brother)
Content is dumbed down.
This is a real problem. You’ve spent big money on these flashy, graphic intensive websites. You’ve hired professional photographers to take beautiful pictures of your properties. The problem? They look terrible on a mobile phone. This is a real con to me.
Lots of different devices out there.
Apple is still the king and the results on our analytics tell that story. 60% of our mobile traffic is from the iPhone or iPad. There are other devices and that means that sites can render differently per device. If you’re going mobile, you’ll need to check your site across multiple platforms. Time consuming and often costly.
I put it up to you.
Does the amount of traffic on mobile justify the cost? Are you going mobile? Any plans to do so? What’s holding you back? Why did you make the jump? Let’s chat about it in the comments.
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT TIME! Maryland Management is mobile now. We just released our mobile site last week. Scan the code to see.
Happy Renting everyone.
Great bunch of tips here for deploying mobile for your properties.
