How the mobile web can change traffic to your website

Aaron Wood

In a previous article, I talked about how smartphones are becoming an incredibly popular product over basic cell phones. Even today, most basic cell phones have a means of getting on the Internet or checking your email. Cell phone carriers seem to be marketing their smartphones more than their basic phones as well. Most all of these Internet-capable phones have the ability to use their cell phone carrier's high speed data connection to browse the web or check email. Presently, most carriers that offer high speed data offer speeds equal to a low end home DSL connection, but the changes and improvements that will be coming in the future are something to watch for.

Most carriers have announced plans to expand coverage of their high speed networks along with increasing the maximum speed that can be reached. This is very exciting because the speeds they are going to be offering will be on par with a basic home cable Internet connection. This might not sound like a big step, but remember that even some of the most basic cable Internet speeds are much faster than a basic DSL connection. Many carriers have planned to start upgrading their network nationwide starting mid 2010 or early 2011, but it will be interesting to see if that is the case, or if they will run into any roadblocks that would extend the ETA.

Along with cell phone carriers developing their networks, cell phones will also start to see an overhaul. There will be longer battery life, support for the new high speed network upgrades, software upgrades that will make browsing the web more pleasant, and faster, more efficient hardware inside the phone itself. So, what will all this mean to users in the long run?

People will be able to access the web from anywhere they have coverage, but these upgrades will mean that users can do more and spend less time waiting for a page to load or a video to buffer. You will be able to stream YouTube videos, but faster and in higher quality without having to have a WiFi connection. Emails that have large attachments or are very long and substantial in size will start coming in on your phone in seconds. Web pages will load many times faster than they ever have on phones, which brings me to the concept of all this. People will be spending more of their downtime on the web trying to gather information or maybe catch up with old friends over instant messaging. There will be more of an opportunity for websites to receive more traffic which means advertising could become a much more critical role than it has been.

Overall, everyone will end up benefiting from these changes. Consumers will enjoy better phones with faster data speeds, website owners can receive more traffic which could lead to a huge influx of advertising revenue, and advertisers can benefit from extra visibility and increased business. Again, I invite you to use your phone to check us out online at www.rejournal.com.

Aaron Wood is the webmaster of Rejournal.com, Norwell, Mass.