Mobile Website Page Type Alternative Uses

Mobile Website Management

For this week's tip, we will take a look at the various page types in the Mobile Management Area of the Squareberry platform. Many of these page types are straightforward, but have alternate uses you may not have thought of previously. Let's take a look.

Mobile Website CMS Page Types

Mobile Menu/Catalog Page

This page type allows you to create a catalog of items or a restaurant menu. But, it could also easily be used to create a staff page. Each staff member could be added as an item and even be organized using the spacers. This is the perfect example of using a page type for an alternative and useful function.

Mobile Website Contact Page

A contact page's function can change by simply changing the name of the page. If you are a restaurant and you make a Contact Page called "Order Now", it instantly becomes an order page. Simply have the contact info be sent to an email inbox that takes orders.

Mobile Calendar Page

This page type shows upcoming events and promotions from the categories you select. But, try making it more specific. You could make a calendar page called "Daily Deals" and have one category called "Daily Promotions". Then you can schedule a single promotion for each day.

Mobile Info Page

The Info page type can also be used as an interesting "Contact" page. While it does not have a contact form, it offers a phone call button, links to social media sites, location features and a content area for adding any text and media you want. This page type can easily be used as your page for providing contact info to mobile site viewers.

Think Outside the Box

Management systems always have specific functions and features. Thinking outside the "standard" use case is a great way to make interesting and effective content. The above examples are just a few ways you can use a mobile website page type for an alternative function.

Mobile Website Sub Menus

Sub-Menus are pretty much what they sound like. Instead of having all your pages on one large menu, you can have lower levels of navigation that allow users to move through your site in organized areas. Sub-Menus on a mobile website can be equated to a drop down on the main menu of a standard website.

Utilizing sub-menus on your mobile site can improve navigation and increase the time people spend on your site. Sub-Menus can be used strategically in a few specific areas. Here are some tips for utilizing sub-menus on your mobile website.

Restaurant Menus and Product Catalogs

This is a great place to use sub-menus. Instead of plopping your entire catalog of items or your entire restaurant menu on one large page, you can use sub-menus to break it up and organize. For instance, a restaurant could make a sub menu with 3 pages: "Breakfast", "Lunch", and "Dinner" - each of which are their own distinct page outlining the food items for that meal. The sub-menu in this situation divides the content in an organized way, so you do not have too much on one page.

A retail store with a plethora of items could implement this same strategy to break up their catalog into departments or types of products. The degree of specificity you take it to is up to you. You could have 4 levels deep of sub-menus to clearly organize everything, or keep it simple with a 2 level structure.

Photo Galleries and Media

You can also organize media on your mobile website with sub-menus. The simplest way to break this up is by media type. For instance on your main menu you have "Media" which opens a sub-menu. This sub-menu then has "Videos", "Photos" and 'Audio Clips". Each of these pages feature media of that certain type.

You can also break your media up more categorically. Let's say you are a non-profit organization who does a variety of activities. You could have a sub-menu called "Media" and a photo gallery on that sub-menu called "Building Projects". In this gallery you feature images of various building projects. You could have more galleries, all featuring images of their own distinct activity type.

Mobile Website Sub-Menus

No two organizations are the same. No two mobile websites are exactly the same. It is important to figure out what works best for your mobile site. Sub-Menus can be very useful, but be sure to not overcomplicate your mobile website or make your navigation so complicated that users get lost.

Catalogs and Restaurant Menus

Yes, Even on Mobile

Don't be fooled. The Mobile Web can be just as feature rich and informative as desktop websites. More and more people are browsing on mobile devices and using their phone as a primary resource for information and search.

Catalogs

Some people may never see your full website. If they find you on their mobile device - that may be it. That could be your only chance to catch their attention or sell to them. Why not have your catalog or featured catalog items right on your mobile site?

For example, if you own a stationary store, you will want to show off the products you offer. Including a catalog of your products on your mobile site is the best way to show off what you have and why someone should visit your location to make a purchase.

Restaurant Menus

Most people searching for a restaurant website online are concerned with a few factors: hours, location, prices and food. (What else do you need to know?) Your mobile site needs to offer all of this information and in a sleek, easy-to-use fashion. You may not need to include every single menu item (though there is nothing stopping you). But, people want to know how much things generally cost and what you offer. Be sure to show the range of your offerings to get interest from as many people as possible.

Also, do not forget about the Phone call buttons. Most mobile users are on phones and including buttons such as "Order Now" or "Call Us" can help encourage people to call your restaurant right then and there. Of course, be sure that someone is there to answer the phone and take the order.

Rich Media on Your Mobile Site

Small Screen? Nobody Cares

It's true. A few years back people could not get enough of bigger and bigger screens (TVs, Computer Monitors, etc.). But, now a mobile crazy culture has turned the tide a bit. People want devices to be quick and portable. Even with this desire for compactness, rich media is still very popular.

People love viewing photos and watching videos on phones and other mobile devices. The lack of screen space or high quality audio has not limited the desire for on-demand streaming content. So, when working on your mobile site consider this. Yes, text loads faster and people are often hunting down specific info on the mobile web. But, do not be afraid to jazz things up a bit.

Adding Rich Media to Your Mobile Site

YouTube Videos

YouTube is very mobile friendly, working across almost all platforms (thanks Google). Squareberry's mobile management area offers a few ways to include YouTube videos. First, there is the YouTube video page type, which allows you to provide a URL to a YouTube video and it will be formatted and fit right onto your mobile site. Additionally, you can embed a YouTube video anywhere you are adding custom content (Home Page, Info Pages, or a Custom Content Page).

Photo Galleries

The Photo Gallery page type is a great way to provide visual content for your site viewers. You can upload and arrange any number of photos. You can add multiple galleries and optimize to your liking. Your galleries are optimized for mobile devices and offer thumbnail views as well as full screen versions of your images.

Graphics, Banners, Icons and More

Your menu can be customized with icons for each page to give your site even more pizzazz. You can also add a banner image to your header and customize your background. All of this enhances your mobile site visually to make is more appealing and striking. It is important to feed the visual appetite of mobile device users to get them engaged as soon as they reach your mobile website.

Multi-Location Businesses

Determine How You Handle Your Business

First of all, if you have a multi-location business you need to determine how you handle and promote yourself. The main thing to consider is if you promote your brand as a whole entity or allow each location to have a more autonomous approach (while of course still remaining under the main brand).

A quick way to figure out which you are (or maybe want to be) is to look at how you do things on Facebook. Do you have one unified Facebook page for your brand (for all locations)? Or does each location of your business have its own Facebook page? Typically, you will only have on website, but on Facebook many businesses are more fragmented.

Best of Both Worlds

Squareberry offers the best of both worlds for multi-location businesses and franchises. A customizable solution from Squareberry allows organizations to push content down to corresponding accounts. This means every restaurant in a chain could have their own separate accounts for publishing to their own specific Twitter/Facebook pages. But, the top level (the brand) could still run company wide events and promotions, pushing them down to all the corresponding locations. Each individual location would then be scheduling their own events, messages and promotions that are specific to their location.

This gives a perfect balance of location specific events and marketing with brand wide promotions to create an ideal solution. Multi-location businesses can empower their brand and their individual locations with a balanced approach that helps drive traffic to the real world locations.

Using Campaigns and Reports in Squareberry

It's New - Now What?

The Squareberry team recently added Campaigns & Reports features into the Squareberry marketing platform. This has a variety of capabilities and features. In this post we wanted to outline some of them and discuss best practices.

What is a Campaign?

A campaign is what you make it. Squareberry's Campaign features are designed to be flexible and allow you to use them as you choose. When creating a Campaign in Squareberry, you simply provide a name and a start and end date.

For some, campaigns are simply done over a period of time. For example, a business may run its "Spring Campaign" or "March Madness". Others may choose to do topical campaigns. Topical campaigns are centered around a series of promotions and messages about the same subject. A small food store may run a campaign about their produce and then get a report on how many views they got of produce promotions, etc.

In Squareberry, you can tag any event, message or promotion with any campaign you have created to include in that campaign.

PDF Exports

There are two places where PDF reports can be exported:

• Social Dashboard: You can export an "Overview Report" at anytime. This report includes social follower growth graphs, social stats, your most viewed happenings, social influence and Facebook Demographics. The Dashboard PDF Report offers a snapshot of your current social marketing efforts.
• Campaigns: You can export a PDF Report of your Campaigns at anytime. Stats reflect the time period of your campaign as well as the events, messages and promotions you tagged for that Campaign.

3 Lesser Known Features - Tuesday Tip

There are some things in Squareberry you may not know about. Tricks, tips or even features you do not use. Squareberry is an expansive platform covering Mobile, Social Media Publishing, Web Calendars, and more. Because of this, you may not be aware of or fully taking advantage of all the aspects of the platform. We wanted to share 3 things in Squareberry you may not know about. Hope you find them beneficial.

1. Drag and Drop Your Location Pin

Locations help drive digital views to your real world business/organization. Your location can be attached to any event or promotion you create. In the Locations area of Squareberry you simply add a location and provide the needed details. A small map is displayed on your events and with your promotions.

When editing your location you can drag and drop the marker pin on the map to set it exactly where you want it. This allows you to mark your location exactly, or mark what entrance is the best to use. Often times Google Maps may not mark your place exactly where you want it to be.

2. Social Media Inbox

Squareberry allows you to plan, schedule and publish your messages and special happenings. But what next? Social media is all about conversation with real people. Squareberry's Social Conversation Area is built to allow you to keep the conversation going, find leads and answer your social followers.

The Social Inbox allows you to track and manage your social conversations. Anyone who replies, comments or mentions you shows up in your Social Inbox. You can then easily reply to them and track your conversation back and forth. People you reply to are automatically moved to the "Answered" section and you can remove conversations, mark as replied and keep the talk going from right within the Inbox.

3. Advertising on Your Calendars + Events

You can add Advertising to your calendars and events. In the Ad Management area you can unlock Ad Groups to add customized banner ads and text & image ads. These ads display on your calendars and can link to any URL you choose. You can use these to promote specials, things on your website or big events coming up.

The advertising feature is also a great tool in fundraising efforts. Ad Spots can be sold to local organizations looking to promote themselves on your online calendar and events. Learn more now >