The Importance of a Mobile-Friendly Website
A business’ success is directly correlated to its ability to keep pace with the fluid nature of customer expectations as well as its willingness to embrace the technology that will both simplify and enhance a user’s buying decision. This statement, while absurdly obvious, can nonetheless be considered as one of the pillars of operating an e-commerce business in the new millennium, where the reach and accessibility of the Internet has changed the world in ways many may not have anticipated.
These days however, it’s not enough to simply have a website; even a beautifully designed, content-rich site can easily get buried in Google’s vast search results (many users rarely go beyond the initial search results page, confident that results ranked 1-10 are the most relevant pages to visit). While having a website is the absolute first step for a business to expand into new markets, any firm that is serious about contending on the web must also consider the myriad of devices their customers have at their disposal to interact with their site – making it all the more important that the site is mobile-friendly.
Why Make a Website That is Mobile-Friendly?
There are two very easy-to-understand reasons why your website or online store should be optimized for mobile viewing.
The first comes from understanding how your customers access your site. For example, if the majority of your intended demographic uses their smartphone as their primary device for viewing the web, a website designed for desktop viewing can leave a negative impression on your mobile visitors when it comes to your brand; so much so that they just may consider buying from someone else.
As a rule, a mobile-friendly site encompasses the following elements:
- Text that is sized for viewing on a mobile device (meaning the user will not have to zoom in to read about your products or services)
- Content (including pictures) that is sized automatically to properly fit the dimensions of the screen, eliminating unnecessary scrolling
- Consideration of link placement (keep links far enough apart from one another so that they are easy to tap)
The second reason why it’s important to have a mobile-friendly site has to do with ensuring your customers can easily find your website. In 2015, Google introduced a new search algorithm that penalized websites that weren’t built with mobile viewing in mind, meaning that businesses faced the real possibility of dropping considerably in Google rank when a mobile search is performed. This alone may not concern the average business owner too much, but considering that the estimated number of smartphone users the world over is expected to exceed six billion by the year 2020, it’s a fact that every entrepreneur operating a non-mobile friendly site should think long and hard about.
This “penalization” is by no means Google’s way of impeding a company’s web sales; rather one could see it as a subtle prompt from the world’s largest search engine that it is time to re-evaluate your site from a user-experience point of view.
So, What Can You Do?
It’s never too late to redesign your site, until it is. The first thing you should do is have a discussion with your web developer about the importance of responsive design (an approach of web design that looks to ensure optimal website viewing on a wide range of devices). Barring that, you could hire a qualified digital agency to help you optimize your site. This option is particularly appealing to a company that does not have the luxury of employing their own in-house team, or have the knowledge or experience themselves to tackle the project.
As far as your website is concerned, it’s also important not to get too attached to your site in its current form. Web design, like everything else, is influenced by trends and trends tend to evolve over time. That being said, your primary focus should always be on creating the best possible user experience – something that can be relatively easy if you’ve taken the time to get to know your customer.
If you still need more convincing, consider the following. Google recently acknowledged that mobile searches have surpassed the number of searches performed using desktops. Simply put, with every passing day that your site remains mobile-unfriendly, the opportunity to improve your business is passing you by.
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