Mobile websites - Old City Web Services

Get ahead of the tide with a mobile website.

July 18, 2011 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Is your website mobile friendly?

If you don’t know the answer to the above question, ask a friend or family member to visit your website on a cellphone or iPad and see if they are easily able to navigate from page to page, find important information (hours, location, etc.) and contact you by phone or e-mail.

With a growing number of people searching the web on mobile devices, it’s more important than ever to make sure you have a version of your website that can be easily viewed on a small screen on a slower connection speed (which most cellular web providers have).

To give you an idea of how much growth we’re seeing in mobile traffic, our web portal, OldCity.com, has more than doubled its mobile traffic since January. In the last 30 days we received over 10,000 visits from mobile devices accounting for 15% of our overall site traffic.

Take a look at the following two example websites on your desktop or laptop computer, then visit them on your mobile device and compare the two:

http://sunsetgrillea1a.com
http://thecornerbar.gypsycab.com

We created both of these websites as well as their mobile counterparts to meet the needs of regular internet surfers and mobile internet surfers. The system automatically detects mobile devices and re-directs them to the mobile site, no extra domain names needed. It’s that simple!

Call us to find out how you can start a mobile website.

For more information, call (904) 829-2772 or send an email to us at letusmarketyou@oldcity.com or take a look at some of our previous blogs about mobile devices:

– Your Customers Will Be Outside This Summer, Can Your Website Go With Them?: http://bit.ly/oh3KLP

– Give your website a mobile advantage: http://bit.ly/iavnja

Make quick updates to your site from anywhere

June 22, 2011 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Note: This month we are reviewing the most popular topics we’ve discussed so far this year, with links to previous blogs as well as some new information on each subject. If there’s a subject you’re interested in that we haven’t discussed, please let us know!

Imagine that you’re out of town on a business trip or vacation when something urgent comes up with your company’s website. Maybe it’s a new announcement, a special sale or a change in your business’ hours—whatever it is, it needs to be taken care of immediately. Rather than spending hours tracking down an employee with the access and ability to update your site, you jump on your Internet-connected laptop, log-in to your site and make the change yourself. In less than five minutes, you’re back on the beach or in your meeting and the change is live on the web.

That story can be a reality with a content management system.

Old City Web Services can build a new website for you with a built-in content management system (CMS) or convert your old site to the new program. In addition to making updates with ease, the CMS also gives you the ability to boost your search engine rankings and add functionality to your site including mobile features and photo galleries.

Read more about the benefits of a content management system by viewing some of these previous blogs:

What is a content management system?

Increase your search rankings with a content management system

Give your visitors what they want with a content management system

If you would like more information on adding a content management system to your website, call us today at 904-867-4112 or email letusmarketyou@oldcity.com.

Your customers will be outside this summer, can your website go with them?

March 31, 2011 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

As the weather continues to improve in St. Augustine, more and more people are going to be outside enjoying all that the city has to offer, which means they will need information on the go. If your website doesn’t make it easy for them to find your location, hours and other important details while surfing on a mobile device, you’re going to lose business.

We want to help you get that business with a simple mobile website. We offer two affordable options for converting your existing website to mobile. Both options will automatically detect whether or not a visitor is using a mobile device and send them to the appropriate site. There’s no need for additional domains or any additional content.

Send us an email or give us a call at 904-867-4112 so that your website can get outside and start recruiting business for you.

Do you really need a mobile site?

When it comes to the rise in mobile website traffic, you don’t have to take our word for it. Google Analytics can provide statistics on exactly how many visitors to your website are using mobile devices. For example, we can tell you that mobile traffic on our web portal OldCity.com has increased 37.79% in the last 30 days. Of the 87,696 visits OldCity.com has received since February 27th, exactly 9,145 of those visits came from mobile devices.

If you don’t have Google Analytics on your website, call us and we can install it for you free of charge. You’ll be able to access the statistics and judge for yourself what kind of mobile traffic you receive. You can also use Google Analytics to track online advertising campaigns, measure your search engine rankings and find out more about the visitors to your website (i.e. geographical location, browser type, etc.).

Call or e-mail us and we can have Google Analytics added to your website in less than 24 hours. Let the statistics tell you where to invest money in your website.

– Old City Web Services

Give your website a mobile advantage.

March 2, 2011 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Mobile web browsing is changing the way the world views websites—including yours.

Everywhere we go now we see people on cell phones, iPads and iPods connecting to the outside world from park benches and restaurant booths. With more and more of your web traffic coming from visitors on mobile devices, now is the perfect time to capture people on the go with a mobile website.

To understand what makes a mobile website different from a standard website, we’ve put together a quick list of the biggest differences between the two:

Smaller Screen Size: Most standard websites are built to display well on a widescreen computer monitor, which means that they have to be dramatically reduced in size to fit on the screen of a mobile device. This can make the text on your website difficult to read and can cause other display issues that make your website hard to navigate.

No Flash Animation: If your website features a lot of moving parts such as slideshows and other Flash elements, most mobile devices will not properly display your website. Instead of your slideshow or other element, some devices will display plain text or a link, while others will display nothing at all. This is especially problematic if your navigation buttons were created with flash.

Simple Information Structure: Users on mobile devices are typically looking for specific information they need on the go such as menu, products, business hours, phone number and directions. Mobile sites therefore tend to have much less content than a standard website so that users can easily find the information they are looking for without having to scroll through multiple pages of text.

Old City Web Services offers mobile solutions.

We have the technology to create a quick and easy mobile version of your website. With the use of a content management system, we can install a plug-in to create a mobile website for your business. The plug-in will automatically detect mobile device users and send them to the mobile site while users on a traditional desktop or laptop will still see your standard website. You don’t have to do a thing, we can handle the entire transition for you, just give us a call or send us an e-mail to get started.