Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly?
Just in case you haven’t noticed, people are addicted to their mobile phones. According to recent studies, Americans now spend as much time looking at their phone screens as they do watching their TV screens. This study also found that nearly 60% of all online searches are now done on mobile phones and 2 of every 3 minutes spent online is through a phone or other mobile device.
With that in mind, as many of you may know, Google updated it’s algorithm a while back to give priority to websites that are deemed to be mobile-friendly. Now that may be good news for people searching on their phones, it could be bad news for businesses that haven’t updated their websites to be optimized for mobile devices.
If you’ve noticed a reduction in online traffic or want to boost your search rankings here are a few tips to get you started:
Your website is the face of your business online, so it not only needs to look good on desktop and laptop computers, you need to make sure your website is mobile friendly as well. There are all kinds of mobile devices: smart phones, tablets, etc. so check that your website looks good and is easy to navigate on ALL devices.
If you are a local business that uses your website to generate leads this is important to do because a Google study has found that 8 of 10 mobile consumers will leave a site if content doesn’t display properly on their device. In addition, 57% wouldn’t recommend a business with a bad mobile site and 48% believe a company with a poor website does not care about their business.
What Can You Do?
Check for Yourself
Visit your website on your phone to make sure that it loads properly, looks good and can be easily navigated. However, even if it looks good on your phone doesn’t mean it looks good on all mobile devices.
Go to responsivetool.com to get a better idea how your customers see your site. The tool is simple to use and more importantly, FREE! After typing in your website url and pressing the “load button”, your site will be displayed on various devices. Choose different presets to see your site on different screen sizes in different scenes.
Mobile-Friendly Forms
Make sure your web forms are mobile friendly too. Email signup & contact forms are a critical part of your site, but when it comes to mobile devices, the less required fields for the visitor the better. Improving the user experience by saving your customer’s time (and their sanity) and watch your conversion rates go up as much as 189%.
One way to simplify your signup forms is to embrace social auto-fill. I’m sure you have seen forms that say “Sign in with Facebook” or “Google”, that is social auto-fill and it definitely makes forms quicker to fill.
46% of consumers will not return to a mobile site after having a bad experience, don’t let an overly complicated form scare them away.
Call-to-Action Buttons
Create a Specific, Well Placed Call to Action Button – Mobile users are 3x as likely to convert into customers – so give them something appealing to click on!
9 out of 10 mobile searches lead to action with over half leading to purchases. Make it easy for visitors to become customers with bold, well placed action buttons that make it obvious where to click.
It’s no longer enough to just have a website online. Your business needs to be accessible to anyone, at anytime, anywhere they are, on any device.
Mobile devices give consumers the information they want instantly, and if your presence isn’t optimized for the way your customers are searching for you – your business could lose up to 50% of the customers that are searching for your services.
How do you know if your site is mobile-friendly?
You can Use Google’s Mobile Friendly Tool & Check for yourself – Google has provided a very useful tool to protect business owners and help them understand the requirements of the new update. All you need to do is go to Google Webmaster Tools and enter your website url.
Get Your FREE Website Audit
For a more in-depth analysis, we at Viking Web Services can create a FREE, custom online audit of your web presence. The report focus on mobile readiness, social media, reviews, SEO and more. See how you stack up against the competition today!
Learn more about the FREE Website Audit click the button below.
