“OnSwipe is a plat­form that makes it insanely easy for pub­lish­ers of all sizes to make their con­tent and adver­tis­ing a beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ence on touch enabled devices via the browser.” –http://blog.onswipe.com/about

I recently came across this com­pany that’s sure to dis­rupt the media land­scape. Essen­tially, it takes the con­tent pro­duced by com­pa­nies and refor­mats it for the iPad. It’s a great tool for con­tent pub­lish­ers like blog­gers and news­pa­pers to pro­vide an easy expe­ri­ence for their visitors.

Your busi­ness, agency or orga­ni­za­tion may not be a heavy con­tent pub­lisher, but it can learn some­thing from the pop­u­lar­ity of this tech­nol­ogy: Sites that are opti­mize the tablet/smartphone expe­ri­ence will get more return vis­its than sites that give those users a ver­sion of the site best viewed on a computer.

So how do you opti­mize for tablets/smartphones? In increas­ing order of customization:

1. Device-specific style sheets. Web­sites that tar­get only com­put­ers often make the nav­i­ga­tion and text too small and the width of the columns too big, ren­der­ing a page that is very hard to read. By tar­get­ing style sheets to spe­cific devices, you can make your web­site much eas­ier to nav­i­gate and read.
2. Device-specific site. Users look­ing at your web­site on a smart­phone are much more likely to want your phone num­ber and address than a slideshow or the other con­tent that is on your home­page. Make it easy for them. By tar­get­ing the infor­ma­tion that they receive, you can make the site load quicker and avoid need­less clicks to get to the infor­ma­tion that they really want. For vis­i­tors that want to see your full site, you can include a link.
3. Apps. If you find that tablet/mobile vis­i­tors are look­ing for a spe­cific func­tion on your site, then you can pro­vide it to them in an appli­ca­tion. You can add your appli­ca­tion to the Android app store for free, or pay a small fee for the iTunes app store. Alter­na­tively, you could pro­vide a web-based app for them. It would be much like the device-specific site, but would have a sin­gu­lar pur­pose, would pro­vide the option to cre­ate an icon for the user’s smart­phone screen, and would omit site fea­tures like navigation.

So how are you prepar­ing your business/agency/organization site for the tablet and mobile revolution?