Mobile Friendly Websites
In this post, I’m going to tell you the importance of having a mobile friendly website for your business, personal blog and so on.
With the majority of the world now owning some sort of smartphone or tablet, people are beginning to abandon their old desktop computer and laptop and are instead, reaching for their phones and tablets for simple web browsing. For example, when you want to buy something on the net, put your hands up if you prefer to carry out that task on a smartphone or tablet, rather than powering up your PC or laptop. I’m guessing, actually I almost guarantee that most of you put your hand up, and this is thanks to how effortless it is to do on these types of devices. They save time and you get the same results.
It doesn’t just have to be when you are shopping online, it can be simply checking your emails when out and about, and of course seeing who recently gave you a poke on Facebook and favourited your last tweet, as mentioned before this is much easier on a tablet or smartphone. Don’t believe me? The next time you are out, have a look around you and and take in just how many people around you are using their smartphone, rather than a laptop.
Increase of mobile internet users
It has been revealed that more than 20 percent of searches on Google are now being performed on a mobile device. This is a huge amount when you take in to consideration just how many people search for something using Google, how many times have you asked a question to your friends and family and someone has replied ‘Google it’ which I’m guessing you more than likely did on your smartphone or tablet.
In 2012 over half of all local searches on the web were carried out on a mobile device. Let’s just take the date into consideration, 2012, now if more than half of all local searches were carried out on a mobile device, just imagine how many are now taking place in the year 2014. This will also be helped with new smartphones being spat out every month and people wanting to use their brand new phone all the time, when possible.
A staggering 25.85 percent of emails were all opened on smartphones and a further 10.16 were opened on tablets, that equals to a massive 39.01%.
It is also expected by the end of this year, that mobile internet users could overtake the amount of people using a PC to surf the web, crazy, but it also makes sense.
This is something your business should NOT be missing out on.
What does Google want?
Google as you probably already know is always trying to improve the results you get on SERPs, and therefore has begun to punish and decrease the SEO ranking of websites that don’t take into account of having a mobile friendly website, now Google has only done this to ensure it stays the best search engine out there, after all more people are beginning to search for products on their phones than on a PC, as mentioned above. Therefore, if your website isn’t mobile friendly you could not only be losing out on a ton of potential sales and business enquiries but you could also see your website fall down the rankings on Google.
How can “responsiveness” help your website?
A recent study shows that almost 75% of mobile users that have access to the internet are most likely to revisit your website if it is responsive (mobile friendly), however, these users are around 5 times more likely to leave your website if it has not been made to be mobile friendly, with most of these users more than likely to go on to a competitors site that is mobile friendly and do business with them instead of you. It gets worse, many of these potential customers feel let down by your brand if they are left with a frustrating user experience when on their mobile.
When we asked someones opinion on the matter they replied “when I have to constantly fiddle around pinching my screen to make it fit my device, it leaves me annoyed and makes me believe the company only wants my money and not my loyalty.”
Therefore if your website has the ability to adapt to people mobiles and have limited scrolling and pinching, whilst be quick to load you are going to reap the benefits of your existing customers and those of which that have left your competitors site and found you, because you gave them a better user experience.
Get in touch with our mobile friendly web designers
Here at Dijitul our design team are always keep up to date with the latest trends when it comes to mobile friendly websites, and understand more than most just how important it is for any business trying to make a name for themselves on the online world, so if you would like to find out how you can make your website responsive, please give us a call today on 01623 650333.
Update – Since this post went live, Google have officially launched “Mobile Friendly” labels to SERPs, giving mobile friendly websites more value. To find out more, simply click the link – http://searchengineland.com/google-officially-launches-mobile-friendly-labels-mobile-search-results-208949