Why it is important to have a Mobile-Friendly Website
94% of people with smartphones search for local information on their phones. And 66% of ALL searches are done from a mobile device.
Back on April 21, 2015, Google released a new mobile-friendly algorithm that was designed to boost the ranking of mobile-friendly pages in their mobile search results.
Recently they have come back and announced that beginning in May of 2016 they will be increasing the mobile-friendly algorithm’s impact. So, if your website is not yet mobile ready, get ready for some significant rank dropping. Don’t think you are safe if you don’t see it take immediate effect. The rollout is expected to be slow and take months to take hold. It is liable to take a while for Google to rescan and assess every single web page out there.
Representatives from Google have stated, “You are either mobile-friendly or not, there are no degrees of mobile-friendliness in this algorithm.”
If your site meets the criteria, then when you do a mobile search, your site has the “mobile-friendly” label showing next to it in the results.
Primary mobile items of concern as voiced by Google are:
- Small Font Sizes
- Buttons Are Too Close Together
- Readable Content
- Viewport Size
- Page Speed
But there are more than 200 different determining ranking factors. You can test if Google thinks that your website pages are mobile-friendly at this URL: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
If your site happens not to be mobile friendly, then you may want to contact us to get your site situated correctly.
Difference between a Responsive Site, being Mobile-Friendly, and a Mobile Site
Responsive Site
Responsive website design is a way of making sites flexible enough to reorient and resize to fit the screen size of any device upon which you are viewing the web page. With the increased use of tablets like the iPad and smartphone devices such as the Android, it is ever more important that your site is responsive.
Mobile-Friendly
As mentioned above, some criteria needs to be met to be mobile-friendly. The most critical factors are page load speed and usability, meaning the text must be legible, and things can’t be so close together that it is difficult to click buttons properly. Images should resize so they fit into the device’s viewport. All of these things are important from a functional point of view and, to some extent, serve as a better experience to the user.
If you expect to rank well in Google’s mobile search results, it is imperative your site be mobile-friendly.
Mobile Site
A website that is mobile optimized has become critical for many local businesses. It is much more advanced than just being mobile friendly or responsive. Images are optimized. Differently, the site is completely reformatted to be quickly engaged by a customer looking at the site on a mobile device. It puts the most critical information such as the phone number, a map, appointment/reservation scheduling, menus, and other highly targeted details up front and center to focus on conversion.
Every Business Should Consider an Optimized Mobile Website
One you have your regular site Responsive and Mobile-friendly, it is prudent that you consider having a pure mobile site for your business. Mobile sites tend to convert traffic better than regular sites that are just mobile-friendly. Look at this example of the two variations and you will see why the mobile site converts better than the other variations.
As you can tell, the non-friendly site can’t even be read because it is so small, and forget about trying to click on anything. When a potential customer comes across this type of site, they immediately hit the back button and go to your competitors.
The mobile-friendly site is a little better from a user’s viewpoint, but there is a lack of prevalence of the most important information that a mobile user is looking for when they come to a site. How do you contact this business? How do you get there? How do yo make an appointment?
With a Mobile optimized website, the conversion rate of your traffic usually goes up. This is because all of the information a mobile searcher needs is all right there at their fingertips. The phone number and map are the most critical items that should be right at the top of the page, after that there should be significant things like a button to schedule an appointment, or a reservation if you are a restaurant. Other relevant services might also be considered to be located at the top of the page.
If you have found that your site is not mobile-friendly, or if you have determined that your business would benefit from a mobile optimized site, we can help you. Visit our Mobile Website Design page for more information.