According to eMarketer forecasts, there will be more than 81 million mobile social users in the US in the next year. What an opportunity to be seen!

See below:

If your site isn’t ready for viewing on a mobile device, you’re missing quite a large market. How do you know if your site is ready? Simple. Open it up on your favorite smartphone. Better yet, ask friends and family to do the same on their phones and listen to what they have to say. Are they complaining?

Here are the typical minefields you might discover when viewing your site on a smartphone:

• The site doesn’t fully load. If you’re still using flash animation on your site, stop it. Right now. How do you know? See that big, gray or white box that’s empty on your screen where your pictures or slideshow is supposed to be? You’re probably using Flash. There are better ways to accomplish animation on your site. We won’t go into that here. That’s another post.
• You have to pinch and adjust the screen to read the text. The problem there is you’ve created more work for your user. They’re going to get discouraged by having to squint and they’ll move on. A mobilized website allows the text to be clear and readable from page one.
• Your images take up the entire screen. Ever see that? Where did the navigation go? It’s just one big picture that doesn’t let you surf the site.
• Your navigation doesn’t work, click or fit. That’s a huge issue for your audience. If they can’t get page one, they won’t even try. Mobile sites have clear navigation that is “thumb and finger friendly.” They work just like apps with nice buttons and menus. Again, another conversation. We’ll go there soon.

Here are some examples of both the mobile friendly version of www.triciamolloy.com (a client) and not so friendly:

[print_gllr id=1898]

With so many people using their mobile phones to surf the web and be social these days, you have to ensure your site will work on every platform including tablets. If you find your site having any of the above issues, contact your web design team. They should be able to help you without having to redesign the entire site unless your entire site is built in Flash. (God forbid!) Some simple changes should enable you to get in front of a very large and quickly growing mobile audience.