RISMEDIA, January 3, 2011—Redesigning and/or rejuvenating your website can be a daunting task. Just recently my team and I sat in our conference room for hours clicking through every possible inch of our existing website and mapping out what those clicks would lead to on the new site. While we were excited about the direction we were going and the new feature set and content we would be offering, there is no question that this is a serious project that will take a lot of resources.
Our goal is to make sure an interested consumer could get as much information from our website about who we are and what we do as they could from talking to the founder of the company. The old adage holds true; content is king. I would imagine that most businesspeople and companies go through this process when rejuvenating their website and because of that think it’s not good time to undertake the task of creating their Mobile Site simultaneously.
Well I have good news—rejuvenating your website is a perfect time to take on the task of going mobile and it’s not nearly as daunting as you think. The reason is that on mobile, content is not king—you don’t need nearly as much of it. On mobile, experience is king. People want less information, but they want it quicker and more efficiently.
So how do you decide what content to put on your mobile site? Think about the things you might want to have access to if you were looking for information on your mobile device. After that, if you want to create a robust mobile site and truly make it a destination which reflects your brand and what your known for, take the top three features of your website and incorporate those things into the mobile site. A good example of this would be a conversation I had recently with a REALTOR® looking to create their mobile site. They of course wanted to include the basics—property search and contact information—but more so the things he and his website are known for; neighborhood statistics and his blog.
As we clicked through his site and he showed me these robust and extremely detailed statistics and expansive blog, we both agreed that all of it would not be needed or wanted from consumers on their mobile device. However, a summary of the neighborhood statistics, with key metrics, and the top blogs pertaining to that neighborhood would be perfect.
Creating your mobile site is like writing the cliff notes to a book. You want to give them so your audience will understand the underlying premise of the story and refer them back to the book for more in depth understanding. Whether you are building a new website, rejuvenating an old one or doing nothing to your website at all, you have all the content you need to create a mobile site that will give consumers the information they need and want while they’re on-the-go. But remember, all mobile is not created equal and finding the right mobile company, like finding the right Web provider, to make your mobile site look and function properly on all mobile devices should also be considered.
There’s no better time to build a mobile site than when you’re already rebuilding your website.
Seth Kaplan is the president of Mobile Real Estate ID. Contact him directly at Seth@mobilerealestateid.com or, for more information, visit www.mobilerealestateid.com.
