Mobile Friendly – Yes or No?
Why should you care about whether your website is mobile friendly or not? Well, if you are spending any money on your website and on things to get leads from the internet then you should care. If you depend on your website for leads then you should definitely care. Why? There are two main reasons.
What is Mobile Friendly?
But first, what is mobile friendly? Before smart phones and tablets became so popular web designers didn’t have to worry about display formats. Everything was fairly standardized. When mobile phones came along, this changed. When you tried to look at a website on a mobile phone, you could only see a little bit of the page and had to scroll left and right to read it. Not much fun. So then developers learned to sense what type of screen the site was being viewed on and format it to fit so that it was easily readable.
Missing Half Your Audience
The first is that you are missing half your potential audience if you aren’t mobile friendly. Said another way, you could be getting twice as many leads if you were mobile friendly. Possibly even a lot more depending on what type of business you have. Why? First, over half of all internet searches are done on smart phones and tablets. So if you aren’t mobile friendly, people will just close your site and find one that is mobile friendly. Second, what is most of the searches are done on smart phones? You are missing most of your possible leads. Think about tow trucks. How many searches for tow trucks do you think are done on desk top computers? Probably not a large percentage.
Upsetting the Search Engines – Not Good!
The second reason to be mobile friendly is the search engines. Search engines like Google want their users to have a good experience and to like the websites that are found in the search. Websites that aren’t mobile friendly do not fit this criteria. So about a year ago, they decided to give a boost in ranking to websites that were mobile friendly and to push down in searches websites that were not mobile friendly. Considering that 75% of people never leave the first page of a search, this is a big problem for companies who do not have mobile friendly sites.
So, if your website isn’t mobile friendly, shame on you. Go get something done about it!