You unleashed a blog post on Twitter
So compelling, I had to click
On a cell phone I was, but t’was no matter
Thank God for unlimited plans, that are super quick
Patiently I waited
For your blog on this tiny screen
With each ticking second
My excitement deflated
Finally I see it!
But alas! I had to scroll forever, to read
Lucky you
For normally, I would have long ago quit
Please don’t pick on my poetry skills, I am a geek after all, not a poet 🙂 . Allow me to explain what this is all about.
In the past two weeks, I’ve been traveling a lot. During those days I truly appreciated GoogleApps, Google Reader and other mobile friendly sites I use. So much so that I’d gotten used to it and got a rude shock after clicking through to a site.
Too many ads, graphics and oh the scrolling.
It was a fabulous post and one I felt compelled to read and comment on, but because it took so much scrolling and was graphics heavy, I gave up and have never been back since.
Depending on your audience, your mobile readership may still be small or non existent. But it is getting there, so why not start now? Be ahead of the game and make it easier for existing readers – bet they’ll love you.
You don’t really have to do that much. Here are some things I’ve tried.
- Keep your design clean, simple
- Keep your images small and quick to load
- Go easy on those ads
- Make sure the content appears first. Menus and other links should only appear after
- If you have an RSS feed, make it display the full story, not excerpts. It’s very annoying to have to click through to a mess
I continue to look for new ways to perfect the site’s usability on a small screen. Will be back to share more when I find anything of interest.
Lynette,
Great tips – I’ve installed a plugin for my WordPress Blog – Mowser – to set my blog to be compatible for mobile browsing – I don’t really know how it performs, though.
Cheers!
Great poem! This exactly describes what mobile users are up against as they attempt to use the mobile web. If you are interested in learning more about the correct way to use the mobile internet, please visit my blog. There is a link to a podcast as well as a definition of what happens to your site when people try to view it on a mobile phone. Very educational reading (I am biased but I’ve had a lot of positive feedback).
Good luck to you all, and consider using the WordPress mobile plugin by Andy Moore.
All the Best,
Holly from mobiEnthusiast.mobi
@Noobpreneur: Thanks! I’ve looked at Mowser too but not so sure I like my blog being viewed through a third party site. Kinda like how Google does when you click through links in Google Reader on the phone. By the way, I have checked how the mobile version of my site using a Firefox plugin User Agent Switch. Not sure if it works for Mowser but it does when I used WordPress Mobile plugin
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59
@Holly: Hi! Thanks for the invite to your site. I’ll check it out soon. I’ve used Andy Moore’s WP Mobile but the comments don’t seem to work on the phone. Took it off for a while because it was beginning to look like a dead plugin but recently he revived it again and am hoping there will be answers for me.
Great post Lynette, as more people become more tech minded they want the convenience of mobile devices, this is something we need to take notice of!
I’ve been thinking about a special size website just for phone viewing. The way I figure it – on my BlackBerry a regular site is super small. What if I enlarged the text a whopping amount, would it show as a normal readable size on it. When I do my tests, I’ll check back.
I think this will work. You will only have to scroll to read-on.