Unless You’re Mobile-Friendly, You’re Irrelevant

2014 was a banner year for smartphones because for the first time ever, mobile internet traffic surpassed that of the desktop computer. As comScore put it, “The days of desktop dominance are over.” 

desktop vs. mobile internet users

Last quarter alone, Apple sold an estimated 39.2 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. That’s whole heck of a lot of phones! When Google announced that as of April 21, 2015, all websites must now be mobile-friendly to rank well, it really came as no surprise. 

So yeah, your website should be mobile-friendly because it’s the future, but let me show you one other reason. The picture below is a Google Analytics snapshot from another website I own. If you’ll notice, the amount of traffic generated from desktops was actually about 3x that of mobile devices. That doesn’t exactly support my previous claims, but look at the numbers again. Notice the difference in Bounce Rate? The bounce rate for desktop users was 54%!! Meaning over half the people that came to my site left after only viewing one page. That sucks and a stark contrast from the more acceptable 18% rate of mobile users. Now compare those numbers to the Average Session Duration and it really becomes obvious. People were spending almost twice the amount of time browsing my site on their mobile device. 

google analytics snapshot

Now the question remains: How do you know if your site is mobile-friendly and what are the top 3 ways to make your site mobile-friendly? 

Verify That Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly

Now it would be just plain rude of Google to penalize your ranking if there wasn’t a tool to verify your site’s mobile-friendliness. Fortunately for us, Google has graced us with their very own Mobile-Friendly Test. After entering your URL, the test only takes about 30 seconds to run, and if everything looks spick and span, you should see something like this: 

Google mobile-friendly test

Congratulations! The Google Gods have deemed your website worthy and have found favor with you.

1. Design A Site With Mobile In Mind

Google places a LOT of emphasis on user experience and so should you. There is nothing more frustrating than navigating a poorly laid out, clunky website on a 5 inch screen. You been there? Save people their sanity by carefully crafting a mobile site that is simple, well thought through, and requires as few clicks as possible for them to find the information they need. Remember, when people come to your site, they have an objective. They might be looking for specific information, needing directions to your location, or simply wanting to know more about you. Whatever the reason, make their lives easier by providing what they need, quickly

2. Prioritize Your Objectives

What is your site’s purpose? Why does it exist? How can you streamline it?

Those are all questions that need to answered before you even begin work on your site. Without a clear path and purpose, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the design process. And take it from me, less is more. If someone is looking you up on their mobile phone, it’s likely they’re not interested in reading everything there is to know about your company.

Let’s say, for instance, you own a pizza shop. From a potential customers point of view, what information would be most important to them? I would guess phone number, directions, or probably reviews. For the time being, no one cares about your grandmother’s secret tomato sauce recipe, so don’t display it on your homepage.

“Mobile shoppers put ease of use foremost when it comes to mobile shopping sites, with 48% of respondents citing it as the most important quality of a mobile site they visit,” cites MediaPost.

3. Use Responsive Web Design

At this point, you might be thinking that you have to design two completely separate websites, one for desktops and one for mobile. Unless you’re creating an App, that really isn’t the case. It’s actually fairly rare with today’s themes and templates to not be mobile-friendly and responsive. Responsive simply means that, regardless of what device you’re using, the resulting website will automatically scale itself to the screen size. For www.simplecontentcreation.com, we use the Avada theme and it’s been amazing. I can’t recommend it enough. 

responsive design

Mobile is the leading digital platform and that’s not going away anytime soon. Data has suggested that the U.S. spends up to 60% of its time consuming digital media on mobile devices! Do you see the trend here? If you truly want to capture your audience’s attention, look no further than the phone in your pocket. For therein lies the future…for now.