Mobilegeddon – Why do you need a ‘Mobile Friendly website’

Just because your site is visible on a mobile device doesn’t mean it is a Mobile Friendly website…

Yes, as more and more people prefer to search and view content using their mobile devices, the search engine giant – Google, has released it’s mobile friendly update on April 21st, 2015. This update focuses on UX that is, user experience of a website on a mobile device. So, if the website that is being viewed has to be pinched so that the content can be viewed correctly, google is going to dump the link. So, all the effort that you have spent in optimizing the site for the search engines will be washed away. Thus, Mobilegeddon.

Travel website have been affected in a big way, as more than 70% of travelers use mobile devices to search for flights, or hotels or cars. There are some very simple rules that need to be followed to make your site a ‘Mobile Friendly website’

Rule # 1: Use ‘Responsive Technology’

The word responsive means that the website is intelligent enough to understand what device it is being rendered upon and respond appropriately to that device to give similar user experience on all devices. A responsive technology framework gives the power to the site in many ways to lay out elements in a grid and then shift that grid based on different screen sizes, so that elements on a large monitor are spaced just as well as they would be on an tablet or a mobile device. Earlier, a programmer would need to build a separate design for the mobile user and program the site to deliver the mobile url when triggered on a mobile device. The Responsive Technology helps remove this redundancy.

Rule # 2: Keep it Simple and Sweet (KISS)

Remember that the affiliate marketing space is a billion dollar industry and if you are looking for a piece of it, you have only 7 seconds to grab a visitors attention. Keeping the design of the website simple will allow quick loading of the site and display the first message that a visitor is looking for. Though this is true for any website design, it is particularly important for a mobile site as the device is small and its resources are not as powerful as a desktop. Make sure the page is optimized for load time, images are rendered with lower byte size and use HTML 5 which renders itself very easily on mobile devices.

Rule # 3: Optimize Web Forms – HTML 5

A mobile friendly website avoids the use of forms. If forms are needed make sure they are optimized for the mobile devices. A travel website cannot avoid a form as it is required for booking details. A best work-around for this would be to seek a social media login like facebook or twitter. The form can then easily populate all the data from this access. Build the web form using HTML 5 as it allows leveraging the technology built into mobile devices to optimize usability.

Rule # 4: Make it easy to Navigate

Navigation and menu items of the site should be opened in an overlay fashion. This will allow a visitor on the site to navigate easily and find the information needed. The most important area that you need to consider while designing the navigation is that a visitor will only be using one hand. Mostly the thumb or index finger. So make sure the buttons and menu items are big enough for even fat fingers. A thumb rule (literally speaking) here is to keep the size of the buttons or navigation links atleast 45 pixels of space in the selection area.

Rule # 5: ‘Mobile Friendly Website’ Test

Once you have follow all the above 4 rules, the last rule is to make sure you are not prey to mobilegeddon. You can test your website to make sure that the mobile version of the website will not be punished by google or other search engines who are also releasing similar algorithms shortly.

Mobile Friendly Website for under $100

Quick Travel Affiliate brings to the table a framework that has the rules for mobile friendly website components already built in. When you sign up with Quick Travel Affiliate, you get

1. A well designed site that uses responsive technology and is mobile friendly
2. Uses HTML 5 forms to help ease in filling the forms
3. Uses overlay navigation to help ease of navigation across the site
4. A framework that can give you you own ‘Online Travel Agency (OTA)” in a couple of days
5. A team of experts who will help you start earning online revenue in a more strategic manner
6. A pre-integrated Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) API, to help your clients research on your site instead of going elsewhere
7. Pre-configured tool, reports and analytics to see how your travel agency website is doing on the internet and lots more…….

Are you ready to get started?