With around 60 million iPhone users in the US today and more than 80 million smartphone users predicted by the end of 2011 (estimates vary), I have one thing to ask you…

Make Your WordPress MobileIs your site optimized for mobile?

As the user base of smartphones grows, businesses must adapt.

If your website doesn’t load properly on a smartphone, you’re leaving a Ginormous demographic behind. Even people who have desktops and laptop computers often use the internet on their phones for on-the-go usage.

Smart is Being Mobile Friendly

For one, you can easily tell your user’s browser to adapt its page width to whatever width the device is, using the meta viewport tag (below). That means that whether someone’s looking at the screen from a computer, an iPhone, iPad or an Android, they’ll all see a web page that fits exactly according to their screen.

<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width” />

Or, even easier perhaps, you could use a plugin for WordPress. While there are quite a few of them, this is the one that impressed me:  WP Touch

Being Mobile Friendly is Profitable

It’s incredibly frustrating to load a web page on a phone and not be able to see it properly. Chances are, if that happens you lose that customer for good.

If they load the site and get a typical, non-phone friendly website, they’ll usually still browse the website. They’re not afraid to scroll a little more or zoom in and out. That said, however, it won’t make much of a positive impression.

On the other hand, if you go through the effort to create a phone-friendly website, this will really create a great impression on phone users. They feel like you “get them” and catered to them. They’ll be much more inclined to do business with you, whether it’s by phone or when they get home to their computers.

Forward Thinkers Tend to be Buyers

Whether or not you create a mobile friendly site does depend a bit on your market.

If you’re catering to 60-somethings who are about to retire, as a demographic they’re likely less inclined to be using smartphones. In that case, you may not need to worry about this at all.

However, in most markets, the people you want on your website are people who are comfortable using the web. People who are comfortable online are also more comfortable pulling out their credit cards. They move through more pages, meaning you get to display more ads. In short, the early adopters are absolutely an audience worth catering to.

The bottom line is this: Smartphones are becoming more and more prevalent all over the world. Give your business a leg up by creating a smartphone-friendly website. It’s not that difficult – in fact, just a few lines of code could make a huge difference.

What do you think?

Is your site or blog mobile friendly? What’s your experience with it?

Are you thinking about making it mobile? What’s your biggest concern?

Do you think it’s important?

UPDATE: Some excellent questions about the WP Touch plugin came up in the comments. Please check out the comments for those questions and my answers.  They are a great addition to this post.  Thanks!



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