Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

By Tom Branch, on January 7th, 2012

Want to know what mobile users see when they visit your site? Pick up your smart phone, open your browser, and type in your URL. If you do not have a mobile-ready site you’re in for a huge surprise!

With a large percentage of the market moving onto mobile devices, you simply must have a mobile version of your website these days. Mobile website design is completely different from full-size browsers. There are severe limitations in screen size and bandwidth capabilities of these devices that must be considered.

My suggestion is to keep it simple! Mobile users want easy access to information. For real estate agents, that means easy access to MLS searches and contact information. We also include a link to a mobile version of our blog.

The Branch Team Mobile Website

If your site is running on WordPress, there are a number of plugins available that will detect mobile devices and send users to the mobile verison of the site. One of our WordPress-based sites uses Plugin Buddy Mobile to create a mobile version of the site. Other than creating and uploading a mobile banner, this was a 10 minute set up. The limitation for real estate agents is access to a mobile-ready IDX solution.

We chose to develop a stand-alone mobile website using a simple PHP script to detect mobile users and send them to the mobile website. This choice was driven by our access to the RE/MAX of Texas mobile-ready property search. While we could have purchased another mobile IDX solution, the cost is prohibitive since not only do we have to pay the IDX provider, we also have to pay our MLS another monthly fee to feed the data to the provider.

You may also want to register a .mobi domain name and set up an m. subdomain for your websites. Mobile users will often try using the .mobi top level domain (www.thebranchteam.mobi) or m. subdomain (m.thebranchteam.com) when they’re looking for a mobile version of your website.

Mobile computing is not only here to stay, it’s going to become an even larger percentage of your web traffic. Is your website mobile friendly?

 

About Tom Branch

Tom Branch has written 597 posts in this blog.


Have you ever just met someone, but felt you like you'd known him for years? That's what most people experience with Tom. He has a knack for making folks feel right at home. After 21 years in the Air Force, loyalty and honesty are the foundation of everything Tom does. In addition to being a Texas Real Estate Broker, Tom is a Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) and a Short Sales & Foreclosure Resource (SFR).

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