Interactive Marketing and Design

In the “web” world, a new phrase is being invented every week. However, one word I strongly suggest to not ignore is “mobilization” of your website. So what is “mobilization” and why should I care? Simple, because that’s where your customers are. Mobilization is taking your current website and converting it to a mobile platform that will put you in the pocket of over 246 million Americans.
The mobile industry is growing faster than any other industry in history. Connections are faster, phones are smarter and more people are using their phones as internet devices. But have you looked at your website on your mobile device?
Your website is usually designed to be displayed in a 1024x768 which allows your site to render in perfectly on a 17” monitor. The problem with mobile devices are their screens are typically formatted at 480x320 (iphone) or smaller. The best way to explain this would be to try and fit an 11x17 photo into a 4x7 frame, it just doesn’t fit. So now when your customers are shopping for you on their mobile phones, the site becomes cumbersome and hard to navigate. This is very frustrating and drives customers away from the site. The exact opposite of what you want to accomplish when spending advertising dollars. So the solution is to create an alternative site that is designed to fit and navigate on mobile devices.
The first question I always get is “so now I have to create a whole new marketing plan for this mobile website?” and the answer is no, not necessarily. Many companies are simply creating their mobile presence, and then allowing us to simply place a code on their standard website that detects what type of device is searching the website and redirects them to the proper formatted platform, a complicated script that only takes a few lines on your site but can become a huge ally in the emerging mobile world. This will allow you to keep your advertising budgets and strategies the same but while creating a seamless web to mobile experience.
To put this in perspective, you have a young man looking to buy a new car. He’s searching the local newspaper frustrated while sitting in the lobby of his local auto repair shop and see’s a full page ad on every page. Each offering the same things, same rebates but one dealer say’s “You can also check our inventory right on your mobile phone! Get pictures, information and even pre-approved, right on your mobile phone!!!” So what do you think your chances are that he would look at your inventory sitting there in the lobby before he looks at any other dealer? Pretty good I think.
To share some statistics with you, 86% of Americans own a Cellular phone. Currently, over 75 Billion text messages are being sent each month and experts project it to grow over 100 billion a month by the end of 2009. This is not an industry to ignore. Whoever you use for your internet or website services, ask them about going mobile, if they haven’t got a clue, give us a call and we can certainly help you get your site mobile.