The second half of the 20th century and the first decade of 21st century has witnessed some of the greatest landmarks of technology era. Personal computers came, then came the laptops and mobiles. The lighter and handier technology became, more it was preferred. That’s what is behind the success of mobile phones. With the first mobile phone call of Dr. Martin Cooper in 1973, the inventor of the mobile phones, communication technology has just not looked back and we’ve constantly gotten served up with the new and better models of mobile communication. Adding sophistication to communication are the industry leaders – Nokia, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone etc.

With an immense user base of mobiles that’s scaling up by leaps and bounds, the web technology has seen a great potential in mobiles. Earlier websites made for the desktops don’t have compatibility for the mobiles due to technical differences such as small screen etc., but they now need to be made mobile compatible if the companies want their branding, advertising, and marketing to reach maximum number of web users. With an estimate of about 5.8 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by 2013 and another that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web access device worldwide by 2013, it’s easy to develop an outlook as to why all the current desktop/laptop compatible websites should have their mobile versions. Web development companies have to come into vigorous action and develop existing and new websites for mobile compatibility.

The mobile application development market is also blooming as the sales of mobiles and their more sophisticated editions, the smartphones, are skyrocketing. Application development companies can make apps for business promotions, business processes, or just entertainment that directly hit the target audience. It’s forecasted that the worldwide downloads in mobile applications stores will surpass 21.6 billion by 2013. With the growing popularity of smartphones such as iPhone and its likes and app stores becoming the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads. Web application development companies, again, have a big battle there with the challenge of who’s going to serve the best to the prospering app market.

So, the mobile development industry is heading where it should be. There’s no taking rest for the mobile website and mobile application development companies until mobiles capture the whole of the web for business and personal interests and we say that anything is possible on mobile.

Think of web applications and first comes business in our minds. But, what flashes in our minds first with the term “mobile applications”? It’s of course “fun and gaming.” Let’s find out in the context of FIFA World Cup 2010 how life has changed with smartphones and mobile application development. With footballers having their wars, mobile software developers had their World Cup too! This one of the biggest sporting event had, for the first time, mobile app developers shower a multitude of World Cup offerings to the soccer fans. Your smartphone could let you follow your favorite game anywhere, anytime with apps designed for the World Cup score alerts, news, play-by-play updates, live commentary, in game video highlights, players’ profiles, virtual soccer gaming, and so on. That being said, mobile application boom in business has just sprouted up and is gaining ground apace. While using mobile applications of games and entertainment keeps you in a herd, using business applications keeps you just in a small pool.

It’s established that the sphere of fun and information-focused content quintessentially constitutes a large portion of the mobile ecosystem. How business relates to it is like either you make it your business or get help in your business from it. Mobile app development is taking place at a phenomenal rate, and as a latest report predicts global smartphone app download market to reach a staggering 15 billion USD by 2013, this revenue surge has got the nerves up for the opportunists to make hay while the sun shines. While Apple iPhone’s app market has stolen the march, other fiercely competing mobile operating systems like Google Android and Symbian, RIM’s BlackBerry, and Microsoft Windows Mobile have got on the bandwagon and heated up the market! Developers are uprising and the applications are getting on becoming richer and richer!

From a business perspective, the mobile applications have both back-end support and high-end corporate solutions to offer. On one hand, mobile websites are new revenue channels for the businesses, and on the other, mobile apps can take care of various aspects of your business from advertising, sponsoring, brand strengthening to serving important functionalities like business tracking, keeping important information close at hand like business contacts or weather conditions for your travel needs, accessing business intelligence reports, getting sales quotes or real-time stock market quotes, and so on. Your business sense was never smarter than this. You may be wondering how easy and fast it is to handle hefty business processes with this small, handy techno-device.

Today, if you think business with mobile apps, you are in a small but cool group. But, with the speed at which mobile apps are catching businesses, tomorrow will be the day when you are nowhere in race with the leaders if your business makes no sense with mobile apps.

Mobile and internet are the two platforms for the software developers to work on. Integrating these two has brought a third platform to explore. Web use has now gone beyond the desktops to have a mobile access, viz. mobile phones and other handheld devices such as laptops, and now sites are to be optimized for people “on the move.”

Web developers are literally put to brainstorm themselves for the mobile internet users as they are challenged with issues based on interoperability, usability, and accessibility. Mobile websites are a subject to limitations for content type and size, applications, navigation and speed. It’s important that the designers apply a radical approach in rendering a mobile web experience as best as it can be.

Not entering the mobile domain means leaving your marketing objectives unfulfilled. A recent study shows a big boost in the mobile advertising business with a tremendous increase in the number of mobile web users watching ads or websites and shopping online or inquiring about the products/services.

Designing of mobile compatible websites requires investing a good amount of time. A full-fledged mobile website may have taken many weeks for its completion. There are sites like mobiSiteGalore for self-help in creating a user-friendly mobile website without much technical knowledge. However, a professional mobile website version may demand hiring a professional web design company for the same.

Smartphones, such as iPhone, have greater mobile capabilities for web compatibility. But, complete mobile website solutions need an intelligent use of the technology supported by all mobile devices. Expecting your business to grow with your website accessible just to the people sitting inside the four walls is just like waiting for water to reach you to quench your thirst.

Mobile websites become necessary for online business holders as day by day mobile users are increasing worldwide.  When it comes to website, first word highlight into mind that is search engine visibility. Does your mobile website have visibility in major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) under your targeted keywords? If NO then you should start following below mentioned Mobile SEO Practices to get found your mobile website into major search engines under your targeted/potential keywords.

There are mainly two factors to optimize mobile compatible website for search engines.

1. Onsite Optimization
   
2. Offsite Optimization (Mobile Website Promotion)

1. Onsite Optimization Factors

• Website analysis
• Preparing mobile SEO audit report (preparing suggestions with respect to design and development perspective)
• Mobile website accessibility and usability related suggestions 
• Getting Domain Know
• Keyword brainstorming
• Mobile specific keyword research (Using mobile keyword research tools)
• Finalizing keywords
• Content (Content should be developed for mobile users so it’s required to keep short content along with mainly importance on services part)
• Preparing title and meta tags
• HTML code optimization
• Internal linking
• Preparing mobile sitemap for search engines
• Mobile sitemap submission to search engines
• Preparing robots.txt
• Mobile analytics code installation for tracking mobile website visitors

2. Offsite Optimization Factors (Mobile website promotion)

• Mobile specific search engines submission
• Mobile local search optimization and marketing (Local business listing of Mobile website in Google, Yahoo, and Bing)
• Website submission in mobile Specific local directories
• Link building activities (General as well as Niche)
• Other conventional website promotion activities including press release submission, article submission, social media optimization, forum posting, blog comment posting, etc.

What are you waiting for? Start optimizing your mobile compatible website now.

There's no query that mobile web use is on the increase. Recently reports tell us that cellular networks worldwide are considering major boost in growth. In fact, there are even apprehensions that the current infrastructure won't be able to keep up with the new demands. 3G traffic in markets will boost by 20% by the end of 2014. There is prediction that more than a third of Europeans will be using the mobile internet by 2014.

What is Mobile Ecommerce?

Mobile Commerce is any transaction, engaging the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods and services, which is started and completed by using mobile access to computer-mediated networks with the help of an electronic device. Japan and some European countries are much ahead of the United States in using of mobile commerce and mobile payments, and also these countries have already become commonplace.

As of March 2009, Japan had 50 percent more 3G subscribers than the United States. The utilize of the mobile technology as a payment gateway first begin in Helsinki, Finland in 1997, when a company owned by Coca-Cola installed two mobile-optimized transaction machines. And NTT DOCOMO, Japan’s zenith cell phone carrier, launched the first 3G network in 2001. Japanese mobile users are now able to use their phones for mainly daily transactions. Through Mobile Commerce, anyone can purchase a plane ticket and use the e-statement stored on your phone to check into your flight.

Mobile Commerce: Ahead of Its Time, mobile phone users think that they would put together more purchases if the procedure was not so burdensome, products were easier to find and their devices supported secure credit card transactions. Web-enabled mobile phone users are much more probable to use their devices to get weather forecasts, read news, find movie times and bank online than to buy products.

Advantages of Mobile E-Commerce

The advantages of m-commerce (Mobile - Commerce) are:

• Providing wider reach
• Reducing transaction cost
• Streamline business processes
• Competitive pricing
• Reducing time to order
• The age of mobile shopping is here to stay, consumers can access millions of products at the palm of their hands and retailers can increase their reach and overall sales
• Use of graphics unlimited
• Unlimited bandwidth
• WAP and SMS unlimited to small number of characters and text.
• More functionality for mobile Internet over mobile phones and existing generation of handhelds than for mobile computers
• Small screens of most devices still unlimited types of file and data transfer
• The good news is that these mobile sites are an addition of your current contribution but they can also locate on their own
• The mobile sites can be foundation from the same database that your are performing now to make their management very straightforward
• New advanced mobile applications characteristically engage high-speed services being accessed by devices distantly, anywhere, at any time
• M-commerce requests to eradicate even further the intelligence of a consumer having to go to the business for products or services, or requiring to be skilled in multiple technologies or having to preparation whenever they want to contact a business using the Internet
• To allow the development of customer use of data options m-commerce applications and technology that have evolved quickly

Focus has been less on the devices and more on the feasible of Mobile commerce (m-commerce).

PLAVEB - Web Design Company offers Mobile Ecommerce Website solution based on client needs.