Tablets are quickly replacing laptops and televisions – they’re lighter and easier to pack, making them more attractive for people on-the-go, which makes tablet optimization very important.
The top four ways consumers use tablets are:
* Organizing recreational activities
* Online shopping
* Reading news or blogs
* Social networking
Unlike the majority of mobiles, tablets rely mostly on Wi-Fi and 3G for connectivity. Making your site tablet-friendly means you’ve got to make it fast. Optimizing your site for tablet means you’ve got to make it familiar and simple.
Here’s what you need to think about:
- Offering your site in classic and mobile versions gives you the upper hand if the user is using an iPad. Remember iPads don’t use Flash. If you have Flash content on your site, simply redirect the user to the mobile version, and everyone’s happy. Also consider making your site in HTML5.
- If your site is primarily e-commerce based have an application developed that directly connects your products to the instant consumer in one tap. Apps easily store all your information in one place and remove the annoyance of waiting for a page to load. They also make the paying experience more enjoyable. The only disadvantage to an app is: it’s not picked up in organic search results.
- Having a content heavy site is great but it can be time consuming and irritating to scroll down for what seems like forever. Avoid this consumer pet peeve by including “Previous” and “Next” buttons for easy content navigation.
Tablet To-Do
Here’s a top 10 list of what you need to do right now to make your site tablet friendly:
- 1.Limit duplicate content by changing CSS so it’s optimized for tablet viewing.
- 2.No Flash, you’re good. Flash, make sure there’s a redirection to your mobile site from the tablet.
- 3.Don’t overwhelm visitors with scrolling fever – include “Previous” and “Next” buttons to help guide them through your content and web pages.
- 4.Consider creating an app for e-commerce pages and information storage to help avoid irritation and slow loading time.
- 5.Optimize check-out process for visitors by using cookies, postal codes, and PayPal.
- 6.Make it touchable: use HTML5 and CSS3 to create scrolling and horizontal navigation to put all content on one page, not giving the visitor a tab-attack.
- 7.Adding CSS to increase the size of buttons on your page to make your site more attractive and user-friendly from the tablet perspective. No one really wants to zoom in that close.
- 8.Offer downloadable content by creating PDF versions of your sites content or important information. This also gives them the option to store your content for future reading.
- 9.Remember the 5 viewing angles: Vertical and landscape in both mobile and tablet, and the straight desktop view. Take advantage of the viewing options available.
- 10.Test, Test, Test – test to make sure it’s good to go and makes a returning impression.
Devices might be getting smaller, but search opportunities and consumer-to-site connection is expanding. You now have indexing for mobile sites, instant purchasing and sharing, and individually developed apps that remove users from the browser and place them directly into a niche online store, keeping their attention focused on the most important goal: conversion.
It’s no secret that we’re moving away from our computer desks and looking for answers on the small screen – is your site ready?