The Importance of Mobile-Friendly Websites in 2019
First things first — what is a mobile-friendly website?
A mobile-friendly website is one that correctly displays on mobile & hand-held devices such as your iPhone or Android as well as iPads & tablets. Also known as responsive web design (RWD), these website designs will “respond” to any device or display enabling for a streamlined experience when viewing the website. In normal-people-speak, the website adjusts to the size of the screen you’re viewing it on. Things shift around so that you don’t need to scroll around what looks like a giant PDF document to find the navigation menus, read the text and see the images.
Desktop traffic has been decreasing for more than a decade and mobile internet use continues to grow. Back in 2017, it was predicted that by the end of 2019, mobile would account for 79% of all web traffic. This could mean that people are looking at the desktop version of your website only 21% of the time. Mobile users continue to be on the rise.
Back in February 2015, Google sent the SEO world into a panic when it published a blog post containing the following paragraph:
“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high-quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”
The reality is that Google knows mobile-friendly websites are essential to a high-quality mobile web experience, and therefore the impact of mobile-friendliness in mobile search results is unlikely to decrease in the foreseeable future.
If your website isn’t optimised for mobile, it will affect your SEO. You want the same content from your desktop on your mobile site. Meaning all text, videos, images, etc. should be crawlable and indexable in mobile.
You’ve probably, more than once, come across a website that isn’t mobile-friendly. You’re checking out a restaurant’s menu before passing by. You have to pinch, zoom and squint on each section of the website to read anything or even navigate the website. This means that the website is not optimised for mobile.
Frustrating, right? Believe it not, many smartphone users (myself for one) won’t put in the effort to browse a website that isn’t formatted for mobile. It’s time-consuming and fiddly. Visitors are more likely to leave your site quickly and head right back to the search results and go to one of your competitors who has a site that’s easy to navigate.
Benefits of a Mobile-Friendly Website
- Streamlined experience across devices
- Positive ranking signal
- Improve mobile conversion rate
- Improved user experience
- Faster download speed
- More flexible and cost-effective than app development
The simple reason why every website should go mobile-friendly sooner than later is that the percentage of mobile web searchers and the impact of Google’s mobile-friendly ranking factor are only going to increase.
Mobile is the present and future.
Don’t throw away your mobile customers and let your search traffic suffer. Make sure your websites are ready with a mobile-friendly design.
…you’re in luck — h2o can help!
