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Given today is the release of the new iPad (iPad 3) from Apple, I thought I’d take a few moments and talk about how you need to adapt to people using iPad’s, and how to make sure their leisure viewing leads to finding your company.

With the ease of access the iPad offers to people, companies are seeing an increased number of visits to their company websites, simply because people love surfing the web on the iPad. People don’t look in the yellow pages for businesses anymore – they sit on the couch and pick up their iPad.

It’s up to you that regardless the path they take, if someone’s looking up businesses on an iPad, that it leads to you. Here’s a few different areas of interest that you ant to make sure you’ve got covered.

Website: First and foremost, if someone wants to look you up because their best friend just raved about you, you better make sure your website is iPad friendly. Though many websites will work okay on an iPad, you want to make sure that your website has an iPad stylesheet which allows everything to load the way it should.

An iPad stylesheet will work if your website uses the latest technology and utilizes AJAX and CSS, etc. If your website has FLASH, it will not load. How would you like Joe Shmo to load up www.YourCompany.com, and its flash? What do you think they’re going to do? I’ll tell you – a Google search for other service providers in your industry that DO have iPad friendly websites.

Search Engines: The biggest outlet for people searching for businesses on the web is Google. The second biggest is other search engines – Bing, Yahoo, etc. The same rules that apply on a desktop or laptop for search engines, apply on an iPad. Your site needs to come up when someone search’s for your industry in your town. You being on page 1 is going to result in more business for you. Plain and simple.

See Why it's Important to Keep Up With Your SEO for more.

Social Media: Do you have a proper social media strategy in place? If users are not surfing the web, chances are they’re checking their social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Having a social media presence that allows people to search for you on Facebook, and also receive company news and updates right in their newsfeed, ensures that you will be kept in mind when your services are needed.  

You don’t have to spam people with every status you post or tweet you tweet, but discussing current events, blog posts, industry how-to’s and tips, can lead to people trusting you and when the time is right for your services, calling you and asking you for help.

Apps: If you are a service provider, I strongly doubt you need to spend the money to create an app for your business. While you can, and we’d love to discuss how an app can help your business, that’s not we recommend for most.

What we recommend is being a part of as many apps as possible, if they are available in your industry. Not every industry has apps designed to helping people find them, but many industries do. For example, if you are a restaurant, there are many,  many food-related apps. Encouraging people to snap pics of your food and posting them on the “Food Spoting” app and being listed in the “UrbanSpoon” app, are just a few examples of how your company can participate in industry-related apps – without creating one.

There are other practices to put in place when thinking about how to reach iPad users, and users of other tablets for that matter. Practices such as having a Google Maps listing can help people locate you on a map and get directions to your industry.

Basch Solutions, LLC is a Rochester ny web design and web development company that specializes in building custom websites, putting in place and managing social media strategies and search engine optimization campaigns, and helping companies raise brand awareness and improving their web presence's all-around. Give us a call or shoot us a message to inquire how we can help you!