An increasing number of people access the internet on their smartphone or tablet. Therefore, mobile-friendly websites are becoming a major trend in online business. This trend shows no trend of abating, so if you want your website to succeed, get on the mobile bandwagon.
Read on to learn about why you need a mobile-friendly website and how you should go about getting one.
Reasons you need a mobile-friendly site
More and more visitors are going mobile
A growing number of internet users are trying to access your site on a mobile device. And this is the main reason you need a mobile-friendly site. This means that to make your visitors happy, your page must be optimized for mobile devices. And must be done in terms of its layout and mobile loading speed.
According to statistics from Smart Insights on mobile usage, in 2014, the number of mobile device users surpassed the number of desktop users (globally). This statistic doesn’t mean people never use their computers to get online; however, most people browse the internet with their mobile device(s) at least part of the time. Smart Insights reports that most internet users “multiscreen,” accessing retail sites on both their mobile devices and desktop computers.
Increase your conversions
If you have a business website, it absolutely needs to be optimized for mobile. Otherwise, you will miss out on mobile sales. According to this infographic from SEOcial, research shows that 69 percent of tablet users used their devices for online shopping in the past 30 days.
Even if you don’t sell anything directly from your website, it’s still important to have a mobile-friendly business site. For example, say you are a dentist and use your site primarily to provide information about your business. Many potential patients will be trying to find your business on their smartphone or tablet, and if they can’t find the information they need easily, they will likely turn to a competing business.
According to the above-mentioned infographic, in a survey conducted by Google, 48 percent of respondents said that if a site didn’t work well on their smartphone, they felt like the company didn’t care about getting their business.
Dedicated mobile site or responsive design?
There are a couple ways to make your website mobile friendly. One is to create a dedicated mobile site in addition to your primary site. Another way is to ensure your primary website has responsive design, which means the site appears the same whether it is accessed on a computer or mobile device.
So is it better to have a separate mobile site or should you create just one website with responsive design? Well, Google recommends the responsive design approach. With this approach, something called CSS3 media queries are used to change the way the page appears on mobile devices. Google says having just one URL (responsive design approach) makes it easier for the search engine’s algorithm’s to index your content.
For more advice on how to put together an excellent website, check out our recent blog post, 6 Tips and Tricks on How to Make a Great-Looking Website.
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