Do You Optimize Your Site for Mobile Users?
Tuesday night I accompanied a friend for a few hours of shopping on the Magnificent Mile here in Chicago. The stores we visited were, shall we say, not exactly the type of stores I spend money in. This gave me time to use my Blackberry to surf the web reading SEO related content on some of the blogs that I watch.
At some point while scanning through some blog SEO content, I realized several Wordpress powered blogs looked much better on the Blackberry compared to others. Being the geek that I am, I had to know how they were doing it.
But first, why would this be important?
We talk a lot about optimizing our sites for search engines, but we also need to be constantly mindful of our readers and the way visitors access our pages. I mean, if I’m reading your blog via Blackberry, chances are that others are too. So, with this in mind, don’t you want to make the experience as pleasant as possible?
What did I find?
Good news for Wordpress bloggers… Alex King has a plugin that automatically optimizes your blog for PDA users.
The plugin, Wordpress Mobile Edition, creates an interface that pulls your post titles into a list and makes them align nicely on PDA screens. This is a simple and lightweight plugin for Wordpress, and one that I highly recommend using.
Kevin also found FeedM8, a service that helps make your blog mobile ready.
Do you optimize your site for mobile users? If so, what tricks do you use?
Kevin | May 23rd, 2008 at 8:40 am #
It’s not something I do but with 3G and edge etc becoming more common it’s something I should probably look at.
I’ll have to have a look at the alex king plugin. Looks pretty good.
Eric Odom (Post Author) | May 23rd, 2008 at 8:43 am #
Kevin,
I never really gave this much thought until just a few days ago when I myself noticed how much I prefer blogs that are readable via my Blackberry. I take trains everywhere here in Chicago, so I’m constantly on my phone surfing the web and playing with applications.
AT&T are talking about some sort of “4G” network now, so this is only going to get bigger and better. I think we as bloggers need to be mindful of the market and make sure we’re accommodating it.
Just my opinion of course.
-Eric
FFB | May 23rd, 2008 at 9:22 am #
From what I can tell and my own experience it doesn’t seem like WP-Mobile Edition works for WP 2.5+.
I’d love to find something that could make my site better for mobile users.
Eric Odom (Post Author) | May 23rd, 2008 at 9:26 am #
FFB,
I just tested it on two 2.5 blogs. It worked on one and not the other. Looks like it’s hit and miss.
I e-mailed Alex King and I’ll let everyone know what I find out.
-Eric
Justin Briggs | May 23rd, 2008 at 11:38 am #
mobile design is something i really need to work on, but have just been too lazy
i fell that being optimized for mobile devices will open a lot of doors in the future to get a lot more traffic.
Aaron at FullTiltBlogging.com | May 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm #
This post is featured in today in FullTiltBlogging.com’s Daily Blog Summary, a summary of the top 50 Make Money Online blogs. Get caught up in just 5 minutes a day.
Great Post.
Article Shark | May 23rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm #
I’d say it depends on what type of content your site offers. If you think your site ears techie readers, then, by all means. However, not too many really reads blogs using small-screened mobile phones or PDA’s, IMO.
Eric Odom (Post Author) | May 23rd, 2008 at 3:26 pm #
@AS:
That may very well be the case, but if you can fix it with a simple plugin and be sure you’ve made your site view friendly for everyone… why not?
@Aaron:
Thanks for the link, and thanks for stopping by.
@Justin:
I agree. I think mobile data will continue to expand and we should try our best to accommodate this.
Luis | May 24th, 2008 at 11:34 am #
I tried using the Alex’s plugin for Wordpress and it didn’t work on my site, I ended up using one called iWPhone and this one works great. Not sure what happened as I know that Alex’s plugins are very good.