Your business has a website for one simple reason: maximum global exposure. You want to reach as many people across the spectrum as possible and this digital connection offers you the cheapest and most effective way to do so.
But more and more, that global audience is turning to their mobile devices – and not their desktop computers – to stay digitally connected. In 2016, for the first time ever, the number of people accessing the internet on their mobile devices overtook the number using desktops. In a study of 2.5 million websites, over 51 percent of site visitors had arrived on pages via their mobile devices.
Most of your clients are on mobile devices
With our gadgets growing smaller, faster and more mobile, the number of people using these gadgets will continue to rise. And because the prices of highly capable mobile devices continue to drop by the day, you now have the opportunity to reach an ever-expanding market.
Even if you already know who your business website is targeting, it’s likely the majority of them will be logging on via a mobile device.
Is your site ready for this mobile revolution? If you’re not yet convinced your site need to be mobile-friendly, here are a few things that may change your mind.
1. It could help increase your SEO ranking.
Search engines (Google in particular,) love websites designed to accommodate mobile device users. The search engine giant says that a Responsive Web Design – which senses the device a visitor is using to access a website and adjusts its size accordingly – is becoming the industry standard.
Apart from simply being courteous to your visitors, there is one selfish reason Google would rank a mobile-friendly website higher than its nonresponsive counterparts: logistics.
You should always accommodate mobile visitors with a smaller screen; the alternative would be creating more websites with varying dimensions and then leading your visitors to the appropriate one.
This create more work for Google’s crawler bots. They would rather index one site instead of two or more versions of the same website.
2. Being mobile-friendly is less work for you.
Why would you want to work on more than one website when you can do it all at one go? While the effort put into duplicate websites might seem like a simple task at first, it’s not easy to scale. When your business grows and your products increase, managing these websites can become complicated, messy and inefficient.
3. It helps minimize errors.
As you work on more than one copy of your website, the margin of error increases with the expansion of your business. The more human intervention, the higher the chances of something going wrong. Don’t increase the chances of posting or editing errors by updating more than one website.
4. Even laptop users use mobile devices.
You might think it’s in your best interest to just cater to your traditional visitors who prefer using their laptops. You would be wrong. In fact, about 90 percent of your visitors will switch between devices at some point during the purchasing process.
Imagine someone browsing their phone, maybe reading their favorite website, before stumbling on your product or service. That person is likely to switch to a laptop or desktop to complete their purchase, so it’s your job to make sure neither experience is a bad one. The transition should be easy and your mobile experience should be as clear and easy-to-navigate as your desktop experience.
5. Being mobile-friendly leads to better social media marketing.
According to a study, the majority of people who share content online use a mobile device. If you want to increase the chances of your website being shared, you need to cater to these visitors. Apart from having the information or service they’re looking for, make sure you present it in an appealing way.
6. Be as professional as your customers expect.
People navigate so much on their mobile devices now that their tolerance for a bad experience is exponentially smaller. Users have no patience for an ugly, complicated, or outdated looking website. If yours isn’t up to par, you’ll lose business and, worse yet, drive them to your competition.
You need a mobile-friendly business website.
There’s no question that mobile-friendly is the way to go. If you’re not serious about updating your site, then you’re not serious about the future prospect of your business. It may take some work to get there – you have to think about mobile site design, experience, programming and more – but it’s a necessary investment that will save you tons of headaches in the future.
