Mobile Websites More Important Than Ever

We all know that having a mobile-friendly website is important, but just how important is it? Well, for the first time ever, mobile users have become the majority for online shopping, overtaking desktops. So over half of the people who visit your online store are now doing so from their tablet or cell phone. Do you still think your website is mobile-friendly enough?

Mobile has taken a 385% increase since 2010, and its continually growing. In fact, it’s expected that by 2015, mobile use will not only dominate online shopping, but the majority of all internet use.

This just goes to show that the sooner you develop your website for optimal performance on mobile, the sooner you’ll be creating better user experiences and less frustration.

The Importance of Mobile Today

Companies like Google know how prominent mobile users are becoming, and as Google is always striving for the best user experience possible, they are investing a lot of resources into accommodating those types of visitors.

Google Search

Where your website ranks in Google is increasingly becoming influenced by the mobile version of your website. In times to come, you can expect that if you don’t have a mobile-friendly site, or if the mobile version is poor, you’re going to see rankings drop. In terms of search engine optimization, Google is going to be looking at how fast your mobile site loads (crucial to user experience), as well as mobile-relevant keywords.

Pre-Purchase Research

Today, over 85% of people will use their smartphone or tablet to research a product before making a purchase (Source: Kentico Software). So even if you are not selling anything directly online, your customers are still researching your business while on mobile. It’s quite likely those visitors are going to be drawing impressions of your business from their experience on your website.

Social Media

If social media is at all a part of your marketing efforts, again, all the more reason to have a mobile-friendly web presence. Social media networks are very heavily used from mobile devices, with upwards of 60% of Facebook users and 74% of Twitter users accessing their account from their phone. You want to make sure that your social media marketing activity is supporting your website by driving people to a site they can actually view and read well (Source: SocialMediaToday.com).

Email

Already half of all emails are opened and viewed from a mobile device. This is not only an important consideration for your website, but for your email marketing campaigns as well.

The First Step

If you don’t already have a mobile version of your website, or are looking to improve upon it, we can help. It starts with an analysis of your web traffic to see just how many mobile visitors you have, what they’re doing and where they’re coming from.

That information will set us on the course to optimizing your mobile site well to capture those visitors without having them turn away because of a poor browsing experience.

The Choices

A mobile version of your website can be setup in two ways:

Responsive – this means you only have one website, but that it adapts and changes its layout based on the screen size it’s being displayed on, whether on a desktop or mobile phone.

Standalone – if you already have a desktop site and at this point do not wish to redesign it in a responsive format, you can create a different website just for mobile users. It uses the same domain as your normal one, except when people visit the site from a mobile device, the mobile site will be displayed to them instead.

We can help you choose what’s best. Get in touch today!