Did you know that more than half of all web searches take place from a mobile device? When you consider how much time you spend with your nose glued to your own smartphone, are you really surprised to learn this?
If people can’t easily access and navigate your website from their smartphone, chances are they’re going to click away and check out your competitors’ websites instead. What business owner wants that?
By making your website mobile-friendly, you can significantly increase the number of people who visit your site and, in turn, increase your sales. Read on to learn more about the importance of having a mobile-friendly website, as well as how you can test yours and update it so that it’s mobile-ready.
The following are some of the greatest advantages mobile-friendliness has to offer, no matter what kind of business you’re running:
First, search engines like Google reward websites that are mobile-friendly. The "powers that be" recognize that just about everyone owns a smartphone these days and uses it for the majority of their internet searches.
Websites that are easy to access and navigate from mobile devices will receive higher search engine rankings compared to those that are not mobile-ready. Remember, the higher up your website is on the search engine results page, the more likely it is that people will click on it (when was the last time you went over to the second page of Google results?).
Having a website that looks just as good on a mobile device as it does on a computer is good for your business’s credibility, too.
In general, people will be more interested in learning about your brand if they can navigate your website with ease. This, in turn, will also increase the likelihood that they’ll want to buy what you’re selling.
A mobile-friendly website also improves your business’s reputation and makes it easier for you to provide customers with a great experience from the second they access your site until they complete their purchase.
People will look more kindly upon a website that meets them where they are and doesn’t require a lot of pinching the screen or rotating the phone to try and take in information or buy something. When they feel more positively about your business, they’ll be more inclined to make a purchase and recommend your brand to their friends and family.
There’s a good chance your competitors have mobile-friendly websites or are working hard to make their websites mobile-friendly.
If you don’t take this seriously and update your own site, you’ll probably get left behind. By making changes now so that your website is easy to find and navigate on mobile devices, you’ll ensure that your business is able to stick around and thrive long-term.
When your website is mobile-friendly and easy to find in search engines, more people are likely to click on it, check it out, and potentially become customers. As your customer base grows, your sales and revenue will grow, too.
It’s not easy to keep a business afloat and make it profitable these days. By prioritizing mobile-friendliness, though, you can drive leads, increase conversions, and set yourself and your team up for success.
As a business owner, you probably do most of the work related to your website from a computer. Because of this, you might not even realize that your site isn’t as mobile-friendly as it could be.
Lucky for you, it’s pretty easy to perform a mobile-ready test and find out where you stand.
Google offers a free mobile-friendly testing tool that gives you an idea of what your site looks like on a mobile device. It also tells you whether or not your site is considered mobile-friendly and alerts you to any problems.
If you test your site and find that it’s not mobile-friendly, don’t panic. You can fix this. Here are some of our top tips for improving mobile-readiness:
When you test your site for mobile-readiness, you might notice that your text is very small and difficult to read from a mobile device. If this is the case, update your font so that it’s larger and more visible.
Avoid dipping below a size 14 font. Anything smaller than this will likely require squinting, which is not great for your customers (or their eyes).
If your images are too large, that can also mess up the navigability of your website from a mobile device. To avoid this, consider including a size code (max-width: 100%) in your site’s CSS. That way, images will automatically adjust to fit the device’s screen.
A mobile-friendly plug-in can work as a temporary fix to your mobile-friendliness issue. Some plug-ins from WordPress can help to make your site more responsive on mobile devices. These plug-ins do have their limitations, though, which is why it’s best not to rely on them long-term.
Plug-ins and tweaks to images and font sizes are good first steps. If you really want to make your site mobile-friendly and ensure it’s on par with your competitors’ sites, it’s best to work with a professional.
As we mentioned above, there are a lot of benefits that come with having a mobile-friendly site. The stakes are too high to risk messing it up just because you want to save a few bucks.
Rather than playing a guessing game and trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t, why not just leave this job to the professionals? Hiring an agency that offers bespoke web design allows you to get a high-quality, mobile-ready website that provides all the benefits mentioned above.
As you can see, there are a lot of benefits that come with taking the time to ensure your website is mobile-friendly. Keep the information on mobile-friendliness and responsive web design in mind and you’ll have no trouble updating your site, improving your search engine ranking, and helping your business grow.
