17 Nov Your Business Website Needs to Be Mobile Friendly…Now!
Welcome to 2015, almost 2016. Your website needs to be mobile friendly and it needs to happen now. There are several reasons why, but first let’s make sure you’re completely aware of what “Mobile Friendly” means.
A mobile friendly website will provide the users coming to the website with a good experience. In short this means that they do not have to manual pinch and move around the webpage’s when they are on the website. If a user has to do manual work to view the content on your website the chances are they are going to bounce off the page and this indicates to the search engines that this website does not provide a good user experience.
The reasons your website needs to be mobile friendly are all tied together. If your website is not responsive or mobile friendly users of the website are going to have a poor experience. That alone is a reason you need to address this issue with your website NOW. In some industries over 50% of traffic to websites is now coming from mobile devices (Smart Phones, Tablets ect). That is too big of a market to ignore in 2015 and in 2016 this is only going to grow.
Aside from your users being unhappy with an unresponsive website, Google is now going to kick your butt over it too. Over the past few years Google has been telling businesses with websites that they need to update their website to provide a better user experience on mobile devices. This started off as a suggestion by Google in order to provide users with a more engaging experience with your website. In 2013 Google took this a step further and would actually not rank websites that are not mobile friendly for searches performed on mobile devices. Now, in 2015 Google will not rank your website on either mobile devices or desk top for searches if the website is not mobile friendly.
Google has created a tool to help you determine if and which pages on your website meet their criteria. https://www.google.ca/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
Did your website fail the Mobile Friendly test? If it did then you need to drop what you’re doing and make sure you take the necessary steps to create a mobile friendly website or you will start to see your traffic drop considerably.
There are two options you have when deciding to make your website mobile friendly.
- Create a responsive version of your website. This option allows you to have all of the same content that currently lives on your website are found on the mobile website. The pages will automatically and smoothly adjust to the user’s device when they are on your website. This is the most common solution to a mobile website.
- Create a mobile website. This option includes creating a separate website that services the use of your mobile device users that come to your site. It will not have all of the same content as your full website, but it has the most important information you want to convey to the user. Websites that have a clear call-to-action are more likely to use this type of website as it has a higher conversion rate. There is also typically an option to “view full site” somewhere on the pages in case the user would like more information.
Bottom line: its 2015 and you need to keep up with your online competition and provide your users with a favorable experience with your website. If you are looking for guidance in regards to your website or any digital marketing objectives, feel free to reach out to us at Spark Boutik.
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