Recent research has revealed that consumers spend 3.3 hours per day on their Smartphone’s. Therefore, it should come as no surprise, then, that 85% of Smartphone owners who were asked said that mobile is a central part of daily life. Yes, Smartphone’s are right up there with wallets and keys as items consumers cannot leave home without.
People use their mobiles for everything from interacting with friends on social media sites to researching information, in particular, product and services while out and about – and more importantly to purchase products and services.
Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
As people use mobile web browsers on their iPhones, Androids and tablet devices it is important that your website be mobile friendly. What this means is that your site displays content quickly and is optimised for viewing on smaller screens without your visitors having to pinch and enlarge the screen in order to view your content.
Many business websites still don’t have mobile-friendly architecture in place and this is disastrous for their business as it means that they are missing out on lots of opportunities to sell to all of those people now accessing sites from their mobile devices.
Your website should be optimised with the right code that recognises what kind of device visitors are using (computer or mobile devices) and display the site in the best format for them.
Visitors and successful businesses all agree and stress just how important it is to make sure that your mobile content loads up quickly.
The reasons are simple; people are accessing your site on their mobile devices while on the move are doing so wirelessly. That means that in most cases it is costing them money in their data plans. You want your site to load quickly for them. Not only that, but they are viewing your site on a much smaller screen so your web pages need to be as light and uncluttered as possible.
Having a mobile friendly site means that you need to re-think what sort of content you have on offer. Because they are on the move and generally in a hurry to find the information that they want you should display the most crucial information that you think somebody coming in through a mobile device would want to see.
So if you are a restaurant owner, it might be your menu, or your booking reservation number, your opening times and where you are located.
Another point to remember is that search engines have a separate ranking system for mobile. Google for example, has Mobile Google, which is a very different version from the classic or normal Google. It is designed and marked differently. It gives preference to sites that are mobile friendly.
Your website maybe ranked on the first page of normal Google search results, but if your site is not optimised for mobile, the chances are it will not rank very highly for mobile searchers so they might not even find your site and will go to your competitors instead.
That is why it is vital that Google understands where your mobile content is by setting up what is called a ‘site map’ for mobile users. This map will be different from the site map for normal users.
Your business may depend a lot on local trade, so you will also need to use geographic descriptors. For example, many buyers might just type the word ‘flowers’ in Mobile Google and in almost every case they will get Google Places information listing all of the local florists (or whatever business you are in). That is because Google has made an assessment that the person searching want that information locally or close to them, or they want the business that services that particular area that they are currently in.
There are thousands of potential customers in your area that make these kinds of searches every single day. You can’t afford to miss out on all of that extra business. To ensure that you don’t, this is what you need to do today:
1. Make sure that your site is mobile compliant. You need to make sure that the pages load properly in mobile devices.
2. Create a mobile sitemap so the search engines can index your pages for mobile browsers.
3. Make sure that your site isn’t too wordy and use smaller optimised graphics. Bear in mind that people don’t read much on mobiles and they want the data to come quickly.
Technology is moving so fast and it is vital for your business to keep up with it. Your customers are. They are embracing mobile internet. It is part of their everyday life.
As a business owner you need to not only understand this new landscape but adapt so that you don’t miss out on all of these new opportunities to sell to the many people who are now access sites and searching for products and services like yours from wireless devices.
Why not contact us today to find out how we can make your site mobile friendly so visitors buy from you and not your competitors.