RISMEDIA, August 5, 2010—These days, the importance of mobile can be clearly illustrated by attending any industry conference. If you simply gaze in at sessions or public meeting areas as I did recently during a conference I attended, you will undoubtedly see almost all attendees glued to their BlackBerry devices, iPhones, and various other mobile devices. While some still carry a traditional laptop computer and now the iPad, the majority of people who have taken time out of their schedules to attend an event will function entirely by relying on their mobile devices for communication and information.
With such intense reliance on their mobile devices, what’s surprising is how few people have ever stopped to visit their own website from their mobile phone! When Mobile Real Estate ID made this available at RISMedia’s 2010 Leadership Conference and Social Media Summit, people flocked to the booth to have their website entered into the Android emulator (which shows what their site looks like when accessed by a mobile phone). The result: they were shocked in many cases to see what came up.
Most of us have experienced the pain of going to a website from our phone and having a less-than-desirable experience, but it’s important to be aware of how your own site functions and leaves users feeling when accessed from a mobile device. If you have done such a great job building your brand online that you come up first on a mobile phone Google search, that’s truly awesome! But what your site looks like when clicked on, if it’s not mobile enabled, may not be so great. Many Realtors whose sites do not function well from a mobile device have admitted to me they wouldn’t want people to even access their site from a mobile device.
At the end of the day, it’s all about the integrity of your brand. Your brand in business is your most valuable asset and it goes without saying that how your brand is portrayed is an absolute priority for you. We could go into overwhelming detail and pile on the statistics for why people are going mobile. The fact is that studies have shown that mobile is currently the fastest growing form of media. What’s most important is that when someone finds you, however they find you, you shouldn’t lose them because your site is not mobile-worthy.
The technology is available to ensure that your website is fully converted and mobile enabled. This will allow anyone who visits your site from a mobile device to have a visually pleasant and easy-to-navigate experience and, more importantly, find the information they want quickly and efficiently. Ultimately, having a mobile-enabled website will ensure that the integrity of your brand does not suffer and is not sacrificed for mobile users.
To see an example of what a mobile-enabled website looks like, visit www.rismedia.com from your mobile device.
For a free consultation on whether or not your website is fully mobile enabled, you can contact Mobile Card Cast at info@mobilecardcast.com.
Seth Kaplan is president of Mobile Real Estate ID.
For more information, visit www.mobilerealestateid.com.
