The WHY and WHAT of Mobile Optimization

Mobile adoption worldwide is happening faster than almost any other technology adoption curve–ever. This has companies rethinking their mobile strategies. It’s no longer acceptable to have a few mobile optimized pages. Companies have to have their entire online experience available to customers who prefer to access content with their smartphones and tablets.

Ron Miller wrote on Fierce Content Management that with mobile adoption growing larger by the day, businesses need to be sure they have an optimized mobile content management system that allows people to clearly read and engage with their websites on tablets and smartphones. Desktop or laptop design delivered to a mobile device tend to alienate users as they have to constantly zoom in and out to see the content.

"It's just unfriendly, and you have to know that people will leave...and surveys suggest if you lose them, they won't come back," he wrote. "They'll just find a site that caters to their devices. It's worth pointing out that not everybody believes this approach is the best way to go, but it is a starting point for companies looking to drive mobile traffic and take advantage of this growing group of users."

What mobile optimization actually means

Another way to talk about mobile optimization is responsive web design. An infographic by Dot Com Infoway, Smart insights, TechCrunch and Google Developers provides insights on the concept of responsive web design and the reasons for its rising popularity. According to the infographic, responsive web design is “the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation.” The key features include a flexible design grid, flexible images and CSS3 media queries and screen resolutions.

Sites that use this approach display well on smartphones, tablets, and e-readers as well as the desktop. Having a single responsive design lets companies engage with more visitors on more devices. This is quickly becoming the requirements rather than an option as the number of mobile Internet users is poised to overtake desktop traffic by 2015.

With this kind of mobile optimized design, organizations can save money and time, while improving the overall experience for the ever-growing number of mobile users.

Crownpeak for mobile

Crownpeak is the web experience management platform for digital marketers who need to launch compelling, unified and relevant digital experiences for web and mobile fast, without IT support. Whether it's seamlessly accomodating responsive design or allowing for unique device configuration down to individual assets, the Crownpeak platform is ready to tackle the challenges of an increasingly mobile world.

As a cloud-based service, Crownpeak requires no software, hardware, IT support or capital expenses and it can be integrated with existing solutions like Adobe, SharePoint or in-house applications. Crownpeak gives digital marketers full control of all content-driven digital experiences across multiple channels, including personalization and localization of content for web, mobile and social media. The platform has full integrations with hundreds of applications including CRM, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, search, and more.