Is your business’s website or blog optimized for mobile devices?
Has the thought ever crossed your mind to optimize your site for your mobile visitors.. probably not?
It certainly didn’t cross my mind until I came across an infographic called The Geosocial Universe by JESS3 Labs.
This data visualization depicts the enormity of mobile phone users worldwide, compared with today’s social networks.
Facebook’s 500 million users is dwarfed by the 4.6 billion mobile users,
The key point here is the convergence.
Where do social networks intersect and overlap with mobile devices.. thereby becoming geosocial?
As mobile phones become smarter, more aware and socially networked.. their popularity and use is only going to rise.
Why Optimize?
“Why should I bother optimizing my site for mobile devices? I already have a website.. ”
Here are some reasons why you should consider optimizing your site for mobile devices,
- Faster page load times for mobile visitors – resulting in lower website bounce rates
- Easier navigation
- Improved readability
- Increased user experience
- Monetizable
WPtouch Pro
WPtouch Pro is a WordPress plugin that shows a powerful, well-designed mobile theme version of your site to the most popular touch-based smartphones like the iPhone, Google Android phones, Palm Pre/Pixi, Samsung and Blackberry touch phones.
Over 90% of mobile web traffic will see your site with WPtouch Pro.
It automatically detects these devices and serves its mobile-friendly theme to them first. Desktop visitors still see your regular theme, and changes to it do not affect WPtouch Pro and vice-versa.
You configure lots of different things about what it looks like and how it works in the WPtouch Pro plugin administration panel.
It is the premier WordPress mobile plug-in on the market today.
Theme Features
- Build custom themes
- Choose from different themes
- Web-App Mode (fullscreen on iPhone)
- All-new theme code, refined design
- New sharing overlay with save to Instapaper support
Classic Overview
Classic Style
- New post display options (e.g. show the first post in full and others excerpted)
- Full WP 2.8+ comment features support (threading, replies, inline replies, pagination)
- Drop-menu supports page hierarchies
- Custom header images
- All new styling options (colors, font faces, sizes, header as glossy, grainy, matte)
Web-App Mode
- Skeleton theme included for custom themeing
- Localized and available in a variety of languages
- New settings and controls for turning on/off tags, categories, dates, authors, buttons in Classic theme
- Support for Adsense, admob & custom ads, above, below header/footer
Admin Features
- All-new, beautiful admin design
- Easier to use tab system, remembers where you were in settings
- Plugin Compatibility panel helps point out conflicts and help you solve them
- Backup/restore settings
- Debug and developer modes and tools
Theme Browser
- Theme browser panel
- Easy, drag and drop Menu + Icons panel
- Easy uploading of custom icons and sets
- Ships with over 200 icons in a variety of sets to choose from
- Easily manage WPtouch Pro licenses from the admin
Menu and Icons
Menu and Icons- See recent support topics and post new support topics from the admin
- Upgrade easily in the admin, see when upgrades are available
- Copy, delete themes
- Setup multiple Prowl accounts for push notifications
- 100% localized, ships with 10 languages (English, French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish)
Other Features
- Remove “Powered by” credit easily
- iPad support coming in v2.1
- Apply WPtouch to be shown to ALL devices
- Add a custom welcome message
- Add a custom 404 page
- Add custom footer content
- Choose switch link destination
- Define custom menu links
- Define custom menu e-mail address
- Define custom menu RSS link
- Choose not to use menu icons
- Enable/disable theme Ajax
- Currently supported mobile devices:
- iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPhone 2G
- iPod touch (all generations)
- Blackberry Storm 9550, 9530, 9520, 9500
- Blackberry Torch
- Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, Samsung touch phones
- Most Android devices
The Social Media Guide – Mobilized
These iPhone screenshots taken of The Social Media Guide provide an overview of WPtouch Pro in action.
Homepage
Here is my homepage viewed on an iPhone (with WPtouch Pro disabled),
On such a small screen, the navigation is quite difficult.
The website visitor can always pinch and zoom.. but in doing it takes longer for the visitor to view your content.
This increases the chance of mobile visitors leaving your site and surfing to another.. as well as a diminished user experience.
Here is my homepage with WPtouch Pro enabled,
With my site now optimized for mobile devices, navigation is far simpler and article readability is greatly enhanced.
Better usability results in mobile visitors spending longer on your site.
Posts
All your posts are easily readable with content being optimized for the mobile device’s screen.
Images are also optimized for viewing,
Comments
Comment functionality is still present.
Your mobile visitors are still able to post, see and even reply to comments,
Sharing
All common sharing methods are supported as well,
Pages
Pages are also easily accessed.. all with custom icons,
Page example –> My About Page,
Categories
Categories are also easily accessed,
Archives
The Archives provide a collapsed view of the last 15 posts.. once again making navigation and accessibility really simple,
Monetize
You can Monetize your mobile optimized site with Ads such as Google Adsense.
Here you can see I have integrated Google AdSense into my mobile optimized site,
Please browse to http://thesocialmediaguide.com.au/ on your mobile device to see WPtouch Pro in action for yourself.
And remember.. having your site optimized for mobile devices does NOT affect your desktop experience. Any user visiting your site via a laptop, or desktop PC.. will still see your “normal” site.
The future of social media is mobile.
Optimize your WordPress site for mobile devices now.
