The website howtogomo.com gives a basic rundown on the benefits to business of adding mobile websites to their business plans, and also offers a list of Google approved vendors that can help assist.
Eight million people in the UK access the Internet from their smartphone every day, and there are 23 million smartphones in the UK amounting to almost 50% of all mobile phones – an obviously huge untapped market for businesses to access.
As well as evangelising the mobile internet cause the Getmo website also includes a ‘see what your customers see’ feature which shows you how your current website looks on a smartphone – highlighting broken links, warped images, dead text boxes and muddled display ratios. It also offers advice on how links and search boxes will function when using a touch screen device such as a tablet or mobile phone, and offers advice on how to clean it up.
Seatwave has been used by Google as an example of adapting a succesful website to an excellent mobile app – online commerce par excellence. CBR wrote about the development of their software development kit here.
Google, naturally, has a lot to gain here. As the creator of the Android smartphone platform used on the majority of the world’s smartphones, alongside the world’s most widely used internet search engine – both of which function on an advertising first business model – it makes sense for the company to push for websites that suit these priorities.
By the same token, given that tablet and smartphones are expected to become the preferred method of accessing the internet over the next few years, businesses will find that mobile websites will soon become a vital aspect of any business plans, and potentially a huge source of income.
