Mobile Friendly Website: 8 Reasons You Need One

Mobile Friendly

If you’re like most people you probably carry your mobile phone everywhere you go. And, even when you’re at home it’s usually within reaching distance. Your smartphone and tablet are increasingly how we go online. In the good old days we only had to design our website for the desktop. Today, you need your website to be mobile friendly which means it displays clearly on a smartphone or tablet. Here’s the seven top reasons you need your website to mobile responsive.

1 Existing Viewers

Around 1 in 5 people are already viewing your site via mobile devices. And, if you’re a restaurant or car dealer it may be 2-3 times higher than this.

Action: Check your stats to see how many people are viewing your site via a smartphone or tablet. If you’re using WordPress or Joomla you can easily become mobile responsive simply by updating your theme.

2 Keep Your Traffic

Every second person says they’ve become frustrated and annoyed when they’ve visited a site that wasn’t designed to be viewed on a mobile device. And, over half of these people say they won’t be coming back.

Action: See what your visitors are seeing by viewing your own site on a mobile device.

3 Google Traffic

Google is now taking into account your mobile friendliness in their search results. If you’re not mobile friendly your ranking will be penalised and demoted.

Action: Do a Google search for your keywords and then visit a few competitors websites. Are they catering for mobile visitors? Is this an opportunity for you to get ahead or are you playing catch-up?

4 Higher Engagement

Want your customers to engage with your content? Studies show that customer engagement increases 85% with a mobile optimised site.

Action: Start to notice your web habits. Are you searching more with your mobile? Are you hanging around longer too?

5 Can I see it?

Some things that read well on a laptop don’t read so well on a smartphone. For instance, is you have Flash video they may be unplayable on a mobile device. Also be aware of the size of your graphics – they will download much slower on a mobile device not connected to wi-fi.

Action: Check your videos and your graphics to see if they play and how quickly they load on a tablet or smartphone.

6 Can I read your email?

Experian Marketing Services suggests every second person may be viewing your email on a mobile device. And, Mailchimp found that 69% of of mobile users delete emails without even reading them if they’re not designed to be read on a portable device. And, 18% said they’d instantly unsubscribe. Ouch!

Action: Review what your emails look like on a smartphone and tablet to avoid wasted effort on attracting subscribers to your mailing list. Use a mobile responsive email template instead.

7 Making Money

It’s been estimated that by 2017, two out of three people will make a purchase using a mobile device. M-commerce or mobile commerce is big business. The downside is that 50% of people have abandoned mobile purchases because the process was difficult.

Action: Again, test your store to see what experience your customers are having. In particular, check how easy it is to fill in the credit card information. Is it costing you sales?

8 Touchy, Feely

Researchers have discovered that pinching, zooming and tapping on your tablet increases the likelihood that you’re going to buy something compared to using a mouse and keyboard. They call it the ‘endowment effect’ which suggests we have an evolutionary drive to own things. And, we merely need to touch something to get the effect. This suggests that buying things with a mobile device is a natural for us.