Google launched its mobile-friendly update on 21st April, meaning that any website not optimised for mobile is likely to experience a loss of mobile search visibility. Given that people are carrying out over 50% of searches on mobile devices, this is a worry for businesses without responsive sites.
If that’s not reason enough though to get mobile-friendly, you could also be losing valuable business from prospects that do actually make it to your website.
Imagine the scenario, you’re sat in a café, you flick on your mobile to your Facebook feed. Cat video, cat meme, cat video, cat meme. Bang – an article jumps out at you: “A career in estate agency – is it for you?” Hmm, maybe it could be.
You open the link – this website monstrosity appears before your eyes.
You try to navigate through the article and soon feel subconscious about your thumb size. In a bid to scroll down you bash endlessly at headlines you didn’t want to click on.
Perhaps frustration gets the better of you – if the career opportunity is anything like the website’s usability, you won’t bother with it. The website doesn’t fit your mobile screen and you can’t be bothered to scroll from left to right AND up and down in order to read it.
This bad user experience means two groups are missing out. First, the mobile user is not finding the information you were promising from the title; second, the business is missing potential sales.
You want people to land on the website, read the content and then act on it, though the reality is that many users on a mobile are likely to bounce if the website experience is poor.
Data insights deliver visibility of these missed moments for the business. Traffic data shows you how many users are arriving at the website and leaving empty handed. The facts speak for themselves.
In a three-month period, represented in the above table, 89% of people arriving on the article left the site from the same page, compared with 71% of desktop users.
After banging your head against a wall for enough time you give up. This is what happens with mobile users who can’t use your website how they want to. Your customer gives up with you and goes to a competitor who gives them what they want and how they want it. The results can look like this.
While the traffic overall was healthy, a breakdown of the data by traffic source showed a 94% drop in traffic from mobile users. Without sifting through this information, that loss of traffic could have been missed. Many businesses are missing revenue without realising it. Could this be you?
Customers are accessing your website on different screen resolutions, from the tiniest mobile screens to the biggest boardroom projectors. To meet the demands of your customers, your website should look good at different sizes and on different devices.
Responsive website design is not something you can tag on to your existing websites; it is the building blocks of how your website works. The old fashioned way was to create a desktop and a mobile website. When the idea meets reality it quickly falls apart. There is no standard desktop or mobile size and there is growing popularity of tablets for both work and leisure. Responsive design makes sure the website is organised and represents you persuasively across all devices.
Let’s compare the before and after websites of one of our customers, Property Personnel:
The website built for desktop only
The website built for all devices
You can find out more about this website in our Property Personnel case study.
Google Webmaster Tools has been sending website owners notifications about mobile optimisation. The search engine wants to improve the mobile experience; so much that it has rolled-out the mobile-friendly algorithm addition suppressing websites that are not responsive or do not have specific mobile versions of the website.
It knows a website optimised for mobile performs better for the growing proportion of web users who are using smaller handheld devices.
The page speed tool in our deep data platform Apollo Insights runs checks for mobile-related issues, and information is reported in Google Webmaster Tools relating to mobile usability.
Having a website that doesn’t work on mobiles and tablets is like jamming your shop door so only a few people can enter. You’re blocking out an increasing source of potential customers and the revenue they could produce. Getting your website responsively designed is flinging the shop door open and letting the crowds in.
Give customers information how they want it and they will help you reach your business goals.
If you’re worried that your website will be affected by the Google update, get in touch with us today. We have specialist teams of SEO and design experts that can review your website, identify any issues and provide actionable insights to get you back on track. Simply call 023 9283 0281 or email [email protected].
James was a Digital Marketing Campaign Delivery Manager at Vertical Leap. James joined us in 2013 and managed an extensive portfolio of digital marketing campaigns.
Categories: Content Marketing, Design, SEO
Categories: SEO