Making Your Website Mobile-Friendly
The importance of having a mobile-friendly website in this day and age
and making it easy, convenient and aesthetically pleasing
When we think about everything that we search for on a daily basis, most of us probably search primarily on our phones. According to StatCounter, people in India access the internet through mobile devices nearly 80 percent of the time. Another interesting study from Pew Research center says that most Americans (95%) own a cellphone and 77% own a smartphone. In 2011, this was a meer 35%. Although most Americans own a smartphone, it’s still dependent on gender, age, household income and education level. Looking at this information, when thinking about your business can be very useful in understanding your target market and whether they are more likely to own a smartphone.
Further, consumers around the world own a range of other devices that they can look up your website on. At the beginning of this year, about 73% of U.S. adults owned a laptop or desktop. 53% owned a tablet or iPad.
When I was writing this blog, I asked some of my friends and family if they generally use their phones or laptops to find new products and services and overwhelmingly, they told me they used their phones. This is because smartphones are convenient, you can use them on the go, or while you’re on the couch relaxing at home. One of my best friends, is a 23 year old middle-class male and he used his laptop so infrequently that he gave it away. Now, he does not own a laptop/desktop/tablet. Therefore, all of his searches are on his mobile phone.
Hopefully, I’ve explained to you the importance of making your website mobile-friendly! If not, below are 5 reasons making your website mobile-friendly benefits your business.
Whether you’ve already embraced the mobile-friendly revolution and happen to be looking for more justification, or you’re determining if it’s worth the effort to move your current site over to a mobile-friendly design, in this blog, I’m going to go over why it’s essential both now and going forward for your business to utilize a mobile-friendly design.
My favorite website platform, as many of you know, is Wix. Wix makes it extremely easy to convert your desktop-friendly website to mobile-friendly. They have a tab in the top right corner where you can switch from editing in “Desktop” to “Mobile”
5 reasons making your website mobile-friendly benefits your business
Improve Customer Experience
We have all been there, your friends texts or emails you a link and you go to open it on your phone and you cant even tell what the company name is. You’re staring at a mess of words and pictures and you’re forced to either reply that you can’t open it, or you have to go grab your laptop and retype the link into your search bar. Now, even if what they sent you was cool, you feel inconvenienced and irritated. If your website viewers can’t easily browse and read the content on your website from their mobile device, they will leave under-impressed. Neil Patel, says in his article How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line, that 60% of mobile-users in the past 12 months have encountered problems when browsing websites that have led them to abandon the page. He also mentions that 38% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that wasn’t available. You don’t want that to be your site.
Increased Average Time on Site
Nowadays, everything is about time. As a business, you have a limited amount of time to capture a consumers attention. “This is even more so the case with mobile devices because users are accessing your website while out and about on the go. If a visitor is able to easily navigate your pages and the content is written mobile friendly, you increase the chance of converting visitors into customers” says Michael George Keating from ereach.
Competitive Advantage Over Your Competition
Most likely, your competition is already ahead of the game with an incredible optimized mobile website. One study by CyberSpace surveyed 200 retailers and only 132 (about ⅔’s) of them had a mobile friendly website. Because of this, if you have a fabulous mobile site, you will already be beating them to the top of the search engine results and get more visibility. This is because Google has made it clear that they give more considerations to a site that allows mobile visibility to rank on search engine. One of the things that Google’s algorithms check is mobility friendliness. Although the survey said that ⅓ companies don't have a mobile-friendly site, this also depends highly on industry. There are a number of industries that you wouldn't be caught dead without a mobile friendly option, and there are some where it is less common and that's where your heightened competitive advantage comes in. The best way for you to find out where your industry fits is doing your research. One way is for you to visit competitor websites on a mobile device and see how user-friendly they are. This will give you a better idea of where your company falls on this scale.
Improving Your Reputation and Credibility
This is huge for consumers that have never heard about your product or service before. People are intuitively skeptical and think some things are too good to be true. You don't want to build on that skepticism by not having a mobile-friendly website.
Your reputation and credibility is all you have as a business, and no business can afford to give people a less than excellent experience, especially online. A mobile-friendly site benefits the reputation of your business both on and offline. Consumers can recognize a well-done website when they see one and will remember if they didn't think it was user-friendly enough. Your goal as a business, should be to ensure every customer who visits your site via a mobile device is happy and thinks that you are reputable.
A mobile-friendly site also helps you build credibility, and to get rid of that skepticism. Being credible for both your customers and with influential people and companies in your industry is key. You want people to be able to recognize your business as a resource that offers helpful information and excellent products or services.
Don’t make customers happy. Make happy customers.
When a potential customer goes to your site, you want their experience to deliver each and every time. Because so many people use their mobile devices to shop online, mobile-friendly websites are the only way to go. Happy customers will return to your website and spread the word about how good it is – and often times, unhappy ones won’t be afraid to share their dissatisfaction.
Websites that are not mobile-friendly are very rapidly becoming disused in our ever-evolving digital world.. In order to ensure your website performs well, you need to make it mobile-friendly. Overall, This is the only way to help your business achieve growth and success.