~Issue Number Fourteen~
July 29, 2011 [Next Issue: August 5, 2011]
Hello Friend,
If you're an Internet marketer and haven't embraced Mobile Marketing yet...you're going to need to start dipping your toe in to the Mobile Marketing waters soon.
You simply can't afford to let this marketing channel pass you by and not take advantage of it. It's NOT about sending out text messages to people...it's far more than that.
If you've been to the phone store lately, you know that the flip phone options are shrinking. Smart phones that were "the latest thing" are now "just" a smart phone.
But...the smart phone users are savvy. They want there information in a format that looks like it's MEANT for a smart phone. Not for a flip phone. So as a business person, you'd better be ready to deliver it looking good...as FAST.
It's all about optimizing your web site for the mobile age.
If it sounds overwhelming, don't worry. Read our Stomper Intelligence Report on Four Tips to Optimize Your Web Site for the Mobile Age. Then implement what you learn and get ready to take full advantage of mobile marketing for your business!
Lee Collins
Managing Director
StomperNet, LLC
"Numbers reveal mobile phone Internet usage trump PC web users - is your business moving in a direction to capitalize on this massive mobile usage?"
~Sherman Hu
by Bruce Hopkins
It's no secret that effective Mobile Marketing will become the defacto standard for competing on the Internet in the future. There are currently more mobile devices on the Internet than there are personal computers. This will only grow over time as the technology improves.
The age of mobile computing has arrived and if you are not positioned to deliver your content to a wide array of devices, then you are not going to be in business. Now is the time to start thinking about how you will compete in a world full of mobile devices.
You must develop your ability to market to this audience, but you should also build out your infrastructure to support mobile marketing activities.
Setting up your infrastructure properly actually goes across your entire business. A properly optimized infrastructure can make the difference between being profitable or not. You need to be able to easily deliver your message across a variety of technologies, and the one thing that you must absolutely think about with delivering content to mobile devices, is speed.
You need to optimize all your web properties to deliver this content in a manner which is acceptable to your mobile users.
You can easily improve the experience of your mobile users with just a little optimization.
1. DEVELOP A BASELINE
The first step in optimizing your website is to take a bench line measurement. A very easy way to do this is to use the Site Performance Tool in Google Webmaster Tools. If you have not installed Webmaster tools on your site, do that first.
There is a lot of great information in Google Webmaster Tools which is critical to your understanding of how the Google Bot sees your page.
Once you log into Google tools and select the site you wish to optimize, take a look under the Labs -> Site Performance Option. This will tell you how fast Google thinks your site is. Google assigns a number to your site and gives you information on how your site ranks in terms of other sites.
They also recommend installing the Page Speed Plugin so you can optimize your site. You can find Page Speed at http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/download.html. In order to use Page Speed you must also install the FireBug Plugin, which is available on the Page Speed page.
Once you install Page Speed, it will give you some suggestions on what changes you can make to your site's resources to improve its page load time. These suggestions will vary according to site, but there are a few items which will be evident across sites.
One of the first areas to concentrate on is your image size. Most web images can be optimized to reduce the size without any loss of quality. Most advanced graphic editors will allow you to reduce the size of your images, even if you are not a graphic artist. It's almost certain that almost every website can increase their load times by just optimizing their images.
Google Page Speed will almost certainly suggest you reducing image sizes to improve your rating. This is an easy fix which anyone can implement in just a few hours depending on the size of your site.
2. HANDLING WHITESPACE
A second item that will almost certainly be flagged is extra white space in your CSS and Java Script files.
Lots of times there are extra spaces or content added to these files which slow down the load time of every page on your site. To fully optimize your site, spend a little time going through these files and removing any items you are not using on your site.
This will not only simplify your site for future design changes, it will also allow you to optimize these files for the fastest download possible. Performing these two tasks will likely allow you to greatly improve the load time of your site, but let's not stop there.
3. SPLITTING THINGS UP
The third area where Page Speed will give you a suggestion is to place your images and style sheets on another URL. The reason for this deals with a core element of web server technology.
A web server will only serve one file at a time, but the browsers can read multiple files. If you can place your images on another URL, then you will allow for parallel downloads of the various files within your site.
While this does not actually save any bandwidth like items one and two will, it will still allow your page to fully load in the browser much faster.
A great resource for handling this task is to place your images and style sheet files on Amazon's S3 service. Amazon has very fast servers and serving these files from that location works very well. While S3 will mean you will incur an additional cost for bandwidth and storage on their servers, the cost is minimal and well worth the benefits you will gain in terms of your site performance.
4. FILE COMPRESSION
Another item where you can improve your server's performance is in the realm of compression of your files prior to sending them to the browser. If you are on a shared host, your ability to control this may be restricted. One thing you should be able to do, even if you are on a shared host, is to add compression commands to your .htaccess file. Exactly how this needs to be performed will vary depending upon your server configuration.
There are some great tips on how to optimize your htaccess file to improve performance for an Apache webserver at www.askapache.com/htaccess/htaccess.html.
You do need some technical ability to properly optimize server configuration files, so if you are not sure about how to perform these tasks, hire your friendly neighborhood Server Administrator to help you out here.
If you have successfully performed all or part of the tasks listed in this article, you will notice a drastic reduction in the load times of your websites. Not only will you enjoy a better Page Speed ranking but you will also improve your ability to keep mobile surfers happy and coming back to your site on their mobile browser. 4 TIPS to Optimize Your Website for the Mobile Age
- Develop a Baseline
- Remove Extra Whitespace
- Split Things Up - Think Amazon S3
- Add Compression Commands to .htaccess file
Remember: Next Stomper SEO Intelligence Report:
Friday, August 5, 2011
Next Week's Focus: Copywriting
FREE LIVE WEBINARS NEXT WEEK:
TUESDAY, August 2nd, 2011 at 3:00pm Eastern Legal...Ethical...and Profitable Hype in Your Copy with Vin Montello Regulations have cut down on the hype in sales copy. They limit the reviews and testimonials that have long been standard. This is both good and bad...some people lacked ethics. Add in the legalize on guarantees and you might think copy can no longer be profitable. But persuasion and story-telling is still in your copywriting arsenal. Vin will teach you how he is able to pull people into his sales copy and have them pressing the buy button over and over again. Register Now!
TUESDAY, August 2nd 2011 at 9:00pm Eastern Website Security: Even the Pros Get This Wrong with Dave Brandley The number one issue among consumers on the web... is trust. With all the scams out there and identity theft running rampant, people...especially uneducated ones...are very leary about inputting ANY personal information online...let alone Credit Card information. When customers purchase from your website, they expect their transaction to be safe and secure. Although all websites have vulnerabilities, these "chinks in your armor" are really quite easy to protect. Having a secure website is not only important to you but it puts a customer so much more at ease to know they are working with a secure site. Dave Brandley has learned the importance of securing the weaknesses in your website and delivering the confidence to your customers, which by the way, happens to increase your conversion. Join Dave, the website security expert, as he discusses trust, conversion and security. Register Now!
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