For all of you who are interested in learning more about how the mobile web is impacting local businesses, Duda would like to invite you to attend the Mobile Websites for Local Businesses webcast presented by DudaMobile’s very own Rajat Khurana, VP of Sales and Garrett McGrath, Sr. Product Manager of AT&T Interactive.

This hour long webcast will highlight the internet traffic shift to the mobile web and how small businesses can effectively reach their customers in this space. Find out more about the webcast here.

The webcast will be held Tuesday, August 23rd at 10:00am PST. Sign-up to attend through BrightTALK or below. This webcast is free of charge and open to all.

DudaMobile officially kicked off the beta of our free mobile website building and hosting platform this week and want to thank all our beta testers who have been creating sites with us!

To celebrate, we are starting a new program called Mobile Website of Week. Each week, we will review all of the latest mobile sites built on Duda by our users and a select one exceptional mobile site to feature on the DudaMobile blog.

So…after reviewing dozens of mobile sites, the DudaMobile team has chosen the winning mobile website of the week.

Congratulations to Effusion Creative Solutions!

What’s so awesome about this mobile website?

The Effusion Creative Solutions mobile website rocks. We were amazed by the simple, yet bold features of their custom template. The mobile site is a condensed version of their regular site, which only includes important information a mobile visitor would be most interested in.

The objective of this mobile website was to allow visitors to review the company’s work quickly and easily with the ultimate goal of having them easily contact Effusion Creative Solutions for a project proposal.  Their final mobilized website is a streamlined version of their desktop site.

Visitors now have the ability to access their company information in just a few clicks, without having to scroll around, read tiny text or zoom in. Rob, of Effusion Creative Solutions “plans to use DudaMobile for all new projects moving forward as an added client incentive. The DudaMobile conversion platform is “a no brainer” and our clients will love the added value”.

Regular Website

Mobile Website

Wait, how did they create this wondrous website?

Rob, “just followed the Duda instructions. Super easy to set up and tweak”.

What easy tweaks were made from the original template?

“We simply removed some content that we felt, on a mobile device, wasn’t necessary. The fonts were changed to normal HTML Fonts instead of webkit fonts — which wasn’t a big deal at all”.

The original template displayed black text on a grey background. Rob changed the background to black and the text to white. These contrasted colors make the site look simple, sleek and classy.

After finalizing a general color theme, separate sub pages were created. Click-to-call and mobile map buttons were added to the home page. After these changes, little to no reformatting was necessary for Rob because of the websites compatibility.

A little about Effusion Creative Solutions

Based out of Chandler Arizona, Effusion Creative Solutions is a unique marketing design firm specializing in creating websites, contemporary logo designs and branding, creating polished marketing materials and Power Point presentations to further clients needs. Specializing in first impressions, Effusion Creative Solutions helps their clients look their best online and in front of their current and potential clients.

Give effusion creative solutions some love

Like em’ on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/effusioncreative

Link Up: http://www.linkedin.com/in/effusion

What’s up with Rob?

Follow him: @robertpfeifer

Learn more about him: http://www.about.me/robertpfeifer

He has a website: http://www.robertpfeifer.com

Anxious to have your website chosen as website of the week?

Email me Theresa@dudamobile.com if you think your site rocks.

Has your mobile site been published? If your site wasn’t published, we didn’t see it (and neither did your customers). Check our Support Center for instruction on how to publish your mobile website!

In a previous blog I wrote about mobile users and the on-the-go type of usage that differentiates them from regular type of Internet users. One of the areas where this is most notable is Search. It relates to the keywords that mobile users type when searching for something, be it movie tickets, a restaurant menu or a local florist. It also pertains to the search results that they will get when clicking on the Search button.

Two interesting statistics show that there is a huge uptake in mobile search and especially in its local nature.

The first is from comScore M:Metrics that reported that in June 2008, 20.8 million U.S. mobile subscribers and 4.5 million European mobile phone subscribers accessed search during the month, an increase of 68 and 38 percent from June 2007, respectively.

The second is from The Kelsey Group which is forecasting that the percentage of mobile searches that have local intent will increase from 28 percent in 2008 to 35 percent in 2013.

So given this information, I want to explain why I believe it  is important for local businesses to take advantage of the soar in Mobile Search by creating a mobile website that is tailored for mobile users.

• Users searching from a mobile device require quick and reliable information. In many cases it is a very impulsive need and if your website doesn’t provide them with the information that they are looking for, they will quickly move to the next search result. A survey conducted by Gomez Inc. discovered that mobile web users do not have much patience for retrying a website that is slow or not functioning. 40 percent of the respondent to the survey said they’d likely visit a competitor’s mobile website instead.

• A small local business website has a much higher chance of ranking high for local searches than regular searches. Mobile users searching for businesses in a certain category and that are located in the geographical vicinity to a certain business should see that business rank higher in their results compared to running the same search from a desktop computer. This is due to Google’s ability to use the location of the device conducting the search (upon the user’s approval). Google can do this  either by using the GPS capabilities embedded in Smartphones or for mobile devices without GPS, users can update their current location manually.
• Google has added a small icon that identifies websites that are tailored for mobile devices in order to help mobile users using Google Search for Mobile focus on the sites that will display well on their devices. An example below shows the result when searching for Pizza. Notice the “little green icon” next to the URL indicating that this is a mobile friendly site.In order for Google to identify your site as mobile friendly, you need to submit your mobile sitemap to the Google Webmaster Tool. See instruction how to do it.

Google Green Mobile Icon

• Lastly Google has also recently launched (Sep 09) a new redesigned experience for Local Search for mobile. If you go to google.com from a mobile device you will notice a link labeled “Local” on the top. Clicking on it will lead you to a directory structure (restaurants, shopping, gas etc.). When you either perform a query search or browse through the directory Google will list only businesses in your geographical vicinity. The main benefit is that mobile users can now search for businesses without typing.

Google Local Search for Mobile

So it’s now easier for mobile users to find your business, only question is if your website is ready for mobile?

To mobilize your website contact us at www.dudamobile.com, we have created mobile sites for several local businesses and would be glad to help you out.