We have all been here before. You grab your phone and google a topic. Click on a site, hoping to find the answer, instead, you cannot find it. Google listed the relevant content in the description, but the page is a mess. You can’t click on things and parts are overlapping. Before long you are pressing the back button, and that site’s chance is over. It can be very frustrating trying to browse a site that is not built for mobile. And the site suffers for it.
Mobile readiness is not a fad
The world has become more mobile. People are on phones and tablets more than desktops and laptops. Mobile devices can have more processing power than some brand-new laptops. And the price is quite attractive. This trend will only continue to grow.
Having a site that adapts to the viewing environment will help ensure you get and keep the traffic that comes to you. It will result in less bounce traffic when people are unable to navigate. Because of this, your site will have a better ranking. This will matter in searches on any mobile-style device.
Usability is key
Have you tested your site to be mobile-friendly? Even if someone told you your site is mobile-friendly, you need to go through everything and check it out. Do the forms work? Can you read the content without strain? Make sure that you have friends or family members with different devices try it out. Each device will give a unique experience.
While the goal is to cover as many devices as possible and be ready for anything, you need to narrow it down. Sites developed to work on any device at any time may take a long time to load. Or it might not be able to take advantage of the latest coding features. You want to have a site planned around devices that the majority of your customers use. For example, your ideal client may always want the latest gadget. In this case, you should plan to maintain compatibility with new devices. These are the devices the majority of your clients will have.
Make it fast
Mobile users expect and demand fast load speeds. They wanted the content in their hand yesterday. There are many factors that control the load speed of pages on your site. The number of plugins and theme components can affect the way your site works. Try to keep extra elements to the smallest amount you can.
As an example, on this site, we have a slider on the home screen. The slider scales down or up as needed to fit the window. But on smaller mobile devices it does not show up. We do this for two reasons. It keeps the load time faster because these extra photos are not downloaded. It also is better for usability. The text on the photos is too small to read on the smaller devices. If it is no longer usable, remove it.
Don’t forget about servers. If your testing reveals slow load times, make sure you check your server. Slower hosting companies and older servers will keep your site running in the past. This will only stand to hurt your site in the long run.
It’s time to test your site
We discussed using friends and family above. But you also need to know how engines like Google see your site. You can use sites like Google Pagespeed to check and see how your site is doing. It is not necessary to have a perfect score but make it the best you possibly can. It can only help to improve your rankings.
In a recent ad campaign that we ran, 80% of users who saw our ad were on a mobile device. And 90% of the responses we got from that ad came from mobile users. Do not ignore a significant amount of potential customers by ignoring mobile readiness.
