Why being mobile-friendly is so important?

With 57% of consumers saying they will NOT recommend a company with a website that looks bad on a mobile device, can you really put off updating your site anymore?

Not any more. Not only are there countless statistics imploring everyone to make their websites mobile-friendly, but Google itself is giving you a pretty big reason for SEO. They are now labeling websites optimized as “mobile-friendly” within their search results and if yours is not mobile-friendly, it can hurt you. Google is using the “mobile-friendly” designation as a ranking factor to promote sites that are optimized for mobile, and demoting those that are not. Search Engine Watch has a great example:

“If a user performs a search with their mobile device, and four of the top five results have a “mobile-friendly” label, all else being equal, the mobile user will give preference to the four results that Google identifies as being mobile-friendly. The effect of this over time is less click-throughs for the website that is not mobile-friendly, and more click-throughs for the websites that are.”

Responsive vs. Mobile
We won’t pull punches here. Focus on “responsive” and forget “mobile” sites.

Responsive websites allow you to create a website with lasting power. It’s a site that is coded and designed to smartly adapt to the size of your viewing device.

They make it easy for your visitor to read the content you want to share with them [and that they’re searching for] easily, without having to pinch, move, adjust and squint. Whether you are on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone, all of your website content is delivered in a strategically designed layout that has thoughtful functionality for how it will be viewed on each of these separate devices. It is like an Apple or Android app, completely responsive looking like it was created for mobile.

Dedicated mobile sites, on the other hand, are entirely separate, duplicate sites. There are some services that allow you to feed your content from your main site to it, but that does not allow a lot of customizations and you may be left with more of a template site. But worst of all, many people take the opportunity of creating a dedicated mobile site to make it a “lite” version of their main site. Why on earth would you want to strip out any of your website content if over a year ago, mobile surpassed desktop searches in the US? And considering that mobile-specific sites do not account for tablets, now you’re ignoring your visitors who aren’t on smartphones or desktops.

Mobile-friendly is taking over the way we search for, buy, interact in online communities, read newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc. It’s time to make sure your website is responsive and ready to compete.

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