Is your company’s website mobile-friendly? Do you know? If your website looks the same on a smartphone as it does on a computer screen—except smaller—then your site is not optimized for mobile. Anyone who wants to access your site on a smartphone will have a hard time navigating it.

But that’s not the half of it. Search engines like Google and Bing rank mobile-friendly sites higher on mobile search. So that means when someone is searching on a smartphone for the product or service your company offers, the search engine is going to put mobile-friendly sites at the top of the results. And more and more people search primarily on mobile.

That means that getting your site optimized for mobile is absolutely critical if you don’t want to lose business to your competitors.

Mobile-Friendly: Two Ways to Get There

To gain an edge in mobile search, you can take one of two approaches: responsive design for your existing site or building a separate mobile site.

• Responsive design – Responsive design means making changes to your existing site so that it looks good on mobile and desktop. A web designer can do this for you. And with responsive design, any changes you make to your website will also appear on the mobile site with no extra steps. Another advantage of responsive design is better search engine optimization (SEO). Google claims that having a single site results in better performance than two sites that may split traffic.
• Separate mobile site – A separate, mobile version of your original site with just the most necessary information on it that makes it easy for users to find your services, location, and contact info. Because mobile sites have less content, users who want more details will likely switch to your desktop site—or go to a competitor’s site. But for companies with a lot of products or services to offer, a separate mobile site is best because it streamlines the mobile experience.

Mobile Web Design from a Company You Trust

Did you know that Solvere One provides web design services? To learn more, contact us online or call (202) 905-2722.

Smartphone Security Risks

Smartphones, with all their convenience and utility, are at high risk for data breach. Common risks include:

• Physical theft – Even Apple employees leave their phones—even prototype iPhones!—unattended long enough to get stolen. When a phone’s data isn’t properly encrypted, a thief, no matter how tech-savvy, can access not only the phone owner’s personal information, but company data including emails, documents, and more.
• Data theft from discarded phones – When someone gets a new phone, it’s typically easy to transfer data from their old phone to the new model. But it’s not as simple to completely erase, or wipe, data from the old phone. When data isn’t properly removed and destroyed, it is up for grabs to anyone who gets access to the device.
• Unintentional or unknowing disclosure – Smartphone apps and location services can gain access to a lot of a phone or phone user’s information. Your employee may not realize how much access they are allowing when they download an app or upload a photo while using location services.
• Phishing – It happens on desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones—phishing. If an employee isn’t knowledgeable about phishing scams, an attacker can access and collect a great deal of data.

How to Keep Employee Smartphones Safe

• Require employees to use a password, PIN, or other means to control access to their phones. Encourage them to change the password often and keep it secret.
• Consider requiring employees to install anti-malware and anti-virus on their phones.
• Have your IT support set up SSL VPN access to company systems. When you establish a Secure Socket Layer virtual private network (SSL VPN), it will encrypt smartphone traffic while in transit between the device and the company network.
• Ask your IT support team what the best wireless security measures are and have those measures in place.
• If you issue company smartphones to employees, consider using device identification technology, which assigns a unique number to each phone and allows your IT support team to remotely disable the device if necessary.
• Encourage your employees to only download applications from trusted sources, such as their phone service providers’ app stores.

Your IT Support Can Help Protect Smartphone Data

Stay productive and secure with wireless security from your trusted IT support team. To learn more about employee smartphone security and best practices for your business, call Solvere One at (202) 905-2722.

Turn off GPS when not in use.

The GPS uses the battery like there’s no tomorrow. Location-aware software is one of Android’s many fortes, but can be a real battery killer. The power control widget is useful for switching the GPS on and off, and you should keep an eye on your notification bar: an icon will appear whenever the GPS is activated.

Turn off Bluetooth and WiFi When you’re not using them.

As with GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will drain more of your battery’s juice when they are on. It’s best to disable these whenever you’re not actually using it. You can use the power control widget on your home screen to enable/disable these features as well.

Wi-Fi Options

If you’re close to a reliable Wi-Fi network during the better part of the day, having Wi-Fi always turned on may be favorable from a battery point of view, since the Wi-Fi radio uses less battery than the 3G radio. Also, when Wi-Fi is on, 3G is off. You can make sure Wi-Fi always stays on by going to Settings > Wireless networks > Wi-Fi Settings. Press the Menu button, tap on Advanced, Wi-Fi sleep policy and select the Never option.

On the other hand, if you’re not close to a strong Wi-Fi signal for extended periods of time, disable Wi-Fi from the home screen widget or from Settings > Wireless networks > Wi-Fi.

Disable Always-On Mobile Data

The Always-On Mobile Data option is on by default, and can be disabled from Settings > Wireless & networks > Mobile networks > Enable always-on mobile data. It allows your phone to be connected non-stop, but does it need to be? I have disabled the setting, and I still get push Gmail and even Google Talk seems to perform as usual, as well as the few apps I have that use automatic updates. However, if you have a lot of apps that regularly connect to the Internet, disabling this option may actually be a bad idea, since turning the data connection on and off will require more energy than simply having it on all the time.

Disable Wireless Location Services

When your device learns your location via wireless network triangulation, it requires less battery than if it had used the GPS but is usually less precise than GPS so most people will use GPS for their location base needs. Turning this feature off will improve battery life and also prevent the collection of anonymous Google location data in the background. You can turn it off from Settings > Location > Google Location Services.

Use a Quick Screen Timeout After a certain time of inactivity, your screen is automatically turned off.  The lower the value, the sooner the screen turns off and the less battery you will use.  We recommend between 15 and 30 seconds.  You can alter this option from Settings > Screen & display > Screen timeout.

Turn Down the Screen Brightness

Android’s Automatic brightness (Settings > Screen & display > Brightness) setting is recommended. If your phone doesn’t have this option, start at 50% and see if that suits you, the lower you take it the better it will be for your battery life.

Live Wallpapers

Live wallpapers are a pretty cool feature, but that extra animation constantly running on the home screen will use up more battery than a standard wallpaper will. Also, if you have one of the Android devices that uses an AMOLED screen; a dark wallpaper will use less juice than a bright one. If you are unsure about your screen type a quick Google search with your phone’s model and the word screen should help determine what your phone has.

Learn what’s eating up your Battery.

On the most recent versions of Android, you can check out a built-in feature that tells you how much your apps use the battery. You can then start using battery drainers less often, or simply uninstall them. Go to Settings > about phone > Battery > Battery use and press the items in the list for further info.

Use of 3rd party apps to manage battery life

There are numerous apps available on the market to manage and improve your battery life, my favorite of which is called JuiceDefender. It comes in several flavors, a free version, and a couple paid versions. The main attraction of this program for me is that it will turn off your mobile data connection (3G/4G) when your phone is in standby. This alone has a big impact on your battery longevity. The paid versions have a lot of extra features that allow you to tailor a schedule of when to turn certain connections on and off, control your brightness, screen time and more. This allows you to automate a lot of the tips and tricks we’ve highlighted here.

Depending on how you use your Android device, some of these options may not be for you.  However, utilizing even a few of these will likely have a big impact on how long your phone will last before needing to be charged and allow you to enjoy your smartphone that much more.