What does it cost someone on a mobile device to view your web site? A large, photo-heavy site can be dozens of megabytes, or more, in size and cellular data isn’t free. How much would you pay to view your web site?
Here’s a web site that shows what it costs someone to view your site on mobile networks around the world. There are a couple of takeaways:
1) Your web site needs to be as efficient as possible when it comes to loading resources and it needs to be lightweight.
Obviously a 10-MB page with many scripts, stylesheets and photos will load more slowly and use more mobile data than a 1-MB page with few resources.
Google can help you measure your page speed.
There are many ways to speed up your page loads. One way is by compressing your pages. Compression can often be implemented with only a few mouse clicks through your web hosting service. Use this compression test to measure the compression of your pages.
There are several free, online services to compress images and to minify or compact scripts and stylesheets.
2) Canadians will be proud to know that, “We’re number one!” We’re the most expensive country in the world when it comes to mobile data.
What’s your customers’ speed?
How many corporate photography customers use a smart phone when searching for a professional photographer? From my informal survey of customers: none. I will guess that retail photography customers would use a smart phone to view photo sites.
How many corporate customers use a tablet to search for a professional photographer? Almost none. Some of my corporate customers use a tablet when they’re moving about but they’ve said they will view photographers’ web sites mostly on their desktop or laptop. Retail customers probably use a tablet far more often to view photographers’ web sites than do business customers.
I know exactly one magazine editor who uses her tablet for viewing photo web sites.
Depending on your market, the need to optimize your site for mobile devices may vary. But you should pay attention here and definitely review your site. Page weight and load time are very important no matter what the device. The need for speed is real.
