When you look at the state of the internet, you’ll notice everybody is talking about mobile-friendly. Why is that?
With 80% of internet users owning a smartphone (and most of them using them religiously every day) the majority of users are accessing the world wide web from their pockets.
Chances are, you’re even viewing this article on a mobile device right now. This means that your small business website needs to be not only compatible with mobile devices but optimized for them. This can leave a lot of small business owners concerned.
It was difficult enough to get your website set up in the first place but fear not. There are a huge host of different reasons why your website should be mobile friendly and this article will take you through them, one by one.
To help you see the importance of getting your website optimized and mobile friendly, we have put together this list. Understanding the importance of every reason will be key to seeing the success of updating your website.
In 2015 Google released one of the most important updates for mobile-use to date. Lovingly dubbed ‘Mobilegeddon’ it boiled down to the one really important point, mobile was here to stay.
When Google gets behind something, you know they mean business and simply put websites that weren’t mobile friendly would no longer perform well in Google’s mobile search.
It may even go as far to mean that if you don’t have a mobile site at all, you’ll no doubt fail to rank completely. Google is the biggest name in the game, and this fact alone should be driving you to change.
Internet trends online will tell you that mobile usage is driving expanded web access to customers. With 75% of adults owning 2 or more devices that connect to the internet, more and more people are changing their behavior.
Digital marketing trends change all the time and don’t forget that 60% of people are using their mobile devices exclusively to make buying decisions, no desktop or laptop involved. Relying on your mobile across a buying process has become an integral part of the customer journey. You should consider this for your small business website.
You can’t deny the fact that search is becoming more and more mobile.
Mobile users have increasingly begun looking for local information about businesses, integrating with apps like Google maps. Search engines like Google want to give their users the best experience, and won’t be ranking you highly if you don’t give a great mobile user experience.
Most websites are looking to sell something, a product, a service or a brand. Your small business website is probably no different.
To tap into your mobile buyers, you should optimize your website for mobile use.
This will help you to convert any mobile viewers into buyers of your product offering or service. Shopify explains that over 50% of all E-commerce sales are coming from mobile devices.
I’m sure you’ve left a website before because it doesn’t load fast enough. It’s a well-known fact that if your website isn’t optimized for mobile, it’ll slow right down.
This is because the website will try to load all of your full page content the same as it would on a desktop browser. You would like your website to ideally load with 1-2 seconds of a mobile user accessing your site to avoid them swiping away.
As we continue to see more mobile adoption throughout the world and more people begin optimizing their sites and content for mobile, you will continue to see the rise of mobile grow.
As more people adopt these devices and usage become more portable, many people will begin to convert their habits. With smartphones now being powerful enough to video edit, photo edit and master tasks thought before impossible we are seeing peoples behaviors shifting completely.
Desktop usage is still here and will continue to remain, but you cannot ignore the rise of mobile use and you certainly need to prepare for it.
Attention is the biggest commodity online. Social media has everybody’s attention right now. All through the world people are swiping and scrolling through social media content all day and all night.
Understanding that social media is an incredible source of traffic is one part of the trick. What you need to do is optimize the content of your website so that when you attract people away from social media to view your content, it doesn’t have them retreating to the safety of Facebook.
We see news style outlets on Facebook do this all the time, with click-bait style articles that people click and read. But crucially they stick around to read those articles because they are mobile friendly.
This is probably the hardest point to accept but also the most important. If you haven’t already begun optimizing your website for mobile users you can guarantee you are behind the times are your competition is.
As a business, it’s never been more important for you to optimize your content for so many reasons from:
If you don’t have your small business website user-friendly already, you are going to be losing out on big advantages that your competitors could be taking away from you.
Not to mention you could also be improving your existing customer’s user experience, and with that leading to higher sales.
It’s easy just to make no changes. However, making no change could be a huge mistake in making sure you are maximizing your potential in the world of online business.
For help in getting your website optimized for mobile, get in touch today.
Contact us today to see how The Web Ally can help your business succeed.
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