Website Momentum

Just how bad does your site look on a mobile phone?

by Joe on March 3, 2010

Sorry, folks. You can’t ignore it any longer.

The mobile internet is here. People are using their mobile phones to visit sites on the internet. Mobile browsers are hitting the mainstream.

How many people are browsing with mobile browsers?

Is your head in the sand about mobile marketing?

Take your head out of the sand

Try 50 Million of them. And the number is growing every month.

Which means that people are definitely visiting your site from their mobile phones, with mobile browsers.

Here’s the question you need to ask yourself:

What does a person using a mobile browser they see when they call up your website?

(Hint: It’s probably not good.)

Now, I could show you pictures all day about how mediocre other people’s sites are when viewed on mobile browsers, but the only site you really care about is your own. That’s natural.

So let’s find out what your site looks like.

First, though, you’ll need to understand that this exercise is not going to give you a 100% accurate result. With so many different phones running so many different operating systems and mobile browsers, the best you can hope for is an approximation.

But an approximation can be useful. For example, which of these two versions of Wikipedia would hold your interest?

Wikipedia for desktop

Wikipedia for mobile browser

The first image is what most websites look like on mobile. You can use the site, but not well.

The second image shows a mobile optimized site. You can read the text! Which would you rather have?

Here’s how to check out your own site:

Visit http://www.opera.com/mini/demo/ (but don’t click just yet; there are a few things I want to explain)

This site shows you a virtual cell phone running the Opera Mini mobile browser. This mobile browser isn’t on every smartphone, but it’s pretty representative. If your site looks great on Opera Mini, it’ll probably look great on other mobile browsers. If it doesn’t, it probably won’t.

The best thing about this demo site is that you don’t have to download anything. If you do an Internet search you’ll find many different mobile browser emulators available, but most of them require a download. Many are geared toward professional developers, and require not only that you download software, but also that you know how to extract, configure, and run things from the command line. Not worth the trouble!

Here’s how to use the Opera site:

1. Call up the site. If the site doesn’t display a virtual cell phone screen, try a different browser. (Firefox works.)

2. Click the “accept” button. (This step took me a while to figure out. Probably I should have read the instructions!)

3. Enter your URL in the mobile browser:

Enter your URL

4. Look at the results.

5. Cringe.

6. Whimper. (Optional)

If your site looks like this one, that’s totally typical:

Typical results for mobile browsers

The good news is, we can fix this.

As I warned above, this image of your site is not 100% accurate, but it will give you a good idea.

Let’s contrast this with a site that has been (minimally) designed for mobile. This is just a test site, FYI, not a real live version.

Test site designed for mobile

Notice any difference?

Other emulators:

If you’re running on Mac, there’s a decent application that’s worth downloading to see how your site looks on an iPhone. It’s called iPhoney, and you can get it at http://sourceforge.net/projects/iphonesimulator/. It’s interesting, but not perfect.

On Windows, you can download any number of simulators from Microsoft and manufacturers like Nokia.

But you shouldn’t waste your time. The simulator above gives you a good enough idea of what people see.

Next steps:

If you’re running Wordpress, there are several plugins to “mobilize” your site. Take a look at http://ielectrify.com/design/wordpress-mobile/ for a rundown on the different options.

I have quite a bit more to say about mobile-friendly websites for small businesses. If you want to be sure to stay in the loop, sign up for my newsletter right here.

(If you’re like me you’re fully confident right now that you’ll remember to check back for the next installment in a few days, but you’re a busy person and it’s probably going to slip your mind. So do yourself a favor and sign up. It’s painless and there’ll be tons of value over the long term. Plus you get my free report on fixing up your website.)

You can also:

Tell your friends about this post.
Share it on social networks (tweet button works great, so does Facebook share, and more buttons are below)
Ask questions in the comments.

(Photo credit for head in sand man: jvh33 via Flikr)

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How to hire a web designer

by Joe on February 17, 2010

A quick guide for small and micro-businesses.

Hiring a web designer is a pretty daunting process.You don’t really understand the technology, and you want something that looks good.

But there’s only one factor that really counts:

Are you going to be able to maintain the site yourself once the designer is done with it?

I’m not talking about making major changes. But unless your business is one of those that never changes, you’re going to need to make small modification over time.

Don't hire a web designer to build you something like this

Let’s use the metaphor of a house. Unless you’re a contractor, you’re not going to want to get involved in moving walls around. But you sure as heck should be able to do the dishes, sweep the floors, paint the walls, and even hang up a picture or two.

Right?

As someone who works with a lot of very small businesses, I see too many people who’ve sunk thousands of dollars into complicated (and sometimes strikingly beautiful) websites that they simply can’t maintain on their own.

This is wrong.

So by all means find someone who can create a beautiful site for you. But it’s more important to find someone who will build you the site in an easy-to-use framework that you can manage yourself.

I’m a big fan of Wordpress. Once everything is set up properly, the site owners don’t have to get involved in the nitty gritty of the code. But they’re free to keep updating the site as they see fit.

As soon as you have a tool that’s easy to use, you’ll use it more. And that translates into a stronger web presence, more traffic, and more committed fans.

Here are two sites you can go look at if you want to see what I mean. The first is the Salmonberry School. The teacher, Paul, didn’t even know how to properly code a hyperlink until this morning, but he’s been competently blogging about school events for several months now.

The other is the Funhouse on Orcas Island. These folks switched from a complicated and hard to maintain site that had been built in an old version of Adobe Pagemill (or something like that). Each update to the site involved emailing changes to someone who did the edits in between his other work. Now it runs on Wordpress. The Funhouse staff can make all the changes themselves. (And they don’t even have to come running back to me for refresher courses. It’s that easy to use.)

By the way, both sites are running on the Thesis Theme for Wordpress, which I like because it’s easy to customize (for someone who knows code) and even easier to use.

Conclusion:

If you’re looking for a designer, find someone who will build your site in a tool that will be easy for you to maintain, without forcing you to learn HTML.

It’s important to have an attractive site, but not at the expense of what I call “internal usability.”

Questions? Feedback? I’d love to hear it in the comments section.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/87642313@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

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Exclude your own visits from Google Analytics

by Joe on February 13, 2010

If you’re doing frequent work on your website, there’s a good chance your biggest visitor is the person who greets you in the mirror every morning.

So?

Image by striatic via Flickr creative commons

So if you’re not excluding your visits from Google Analytics, you’re creating some crazy data.

Now, it’s a given that your analytics data is never perfect, but if you’re throwing it off by 1, 2, 5 or 10%, you’re not doing yourself any favors.

Luckily, there are several reasonably easy ways to remove your own visits from analytics.

I’ve got my favorite, which I’ll share here. It’s not the only way. For example, you can exclude by IP address. This works well if you’re always connected from the same place (like work). It doesn’t work too well for me, though, because not only can I not figure out my IP address, but I’m often working from home or coffee shops.

My choice is to exclude my visits based on cookies I set in my browsers.

Three steps:

1. create a filter to block your visits.

2. create a special web page to set a cookie in your browser (not as hard as it sounds).

3. visit that page in all the browsers and from all the computers you use.

Ready to dive in?

Watch this video, then download the sample html file and the screenshots.

If you need a refresher on the settings they are:

name of your choosing
custom filter
exclude
dropdown to “user defined”
pattern of your choice: no spaces or quotes/apostrophes
not case sensitive
add your profile to right hand box
save

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Questions? Ask them in the comments!

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Increase Facebook Fan Page signups with the Facebook Fan Box

by Joe on February 12, 2010

You already know that having a good Facebook Fan Page can be an important way of connecting with your visitors. Becoming a fan is less intense than signing up for your newsletter; it’s a low-key commitment. And one of the biggest benefits to you is that if a fan shares something you put out on your fan page, all their friends will see it. This can bring big benefits.

So what’s the right way to get people to sign up as fans on your page?

There are three typical ways people invite visitors to become friends.

1. They just use a little fb graphic like this one:

Simple Facebook graphic

2. They use any one of a number of fb graphics and also include the call to action, “Become a Fan.” Sometimes this is graphical, sometimes text.

3. They use a Facebook Fan Box.

The Facebook Fan Box for the Seadoc Society

What’s a fan box?

It’s a live feed of the most recent activity on your fan page, plus a selection of your fans, with pictures…

And as you can see, it comes with a “become a fan” button.

Note: The image on the right is shrunk down from the real size.

So what’s so great about using a Fan Box?

It looks like Facebook.
The button is just like buttons they’ve clicked before.
They get to see your most recent post. This proves there really is content there and they’ll see a benefit from signing up.
Social proof of the number of fans, with pictures. Again, it’s just like fb, but the fan box is on your website.

Of course, when you’re showing off your content in your fan box, you’ll want to make sure it’s actually good. And you might not want to show your fan count if you’ve only got three fans.

Here’s how to get a fan box:

Just go the the Widgets page at http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/index.php

The fan box on the widgets page

If you’re logged in, you’ll see a list of pages you administer. Choose whether you want to show your stream, fans and Facebook logo, then click the button that says “Other”

Add your facebook fan box

Then just copy the code Facebook gives you and paste it into your web page.

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