Semalt Explains Why Having A Mobile-Friendly Website Matters

About a few years ago, I was quite hungry and decided to search online for any fast-food restaurant nearest to my location. I discovered that most of the websites I tried to open were not optimized for mobile devices. I had to do a lot of pinching and zooming to get a clear view of the contents.

Clicking the right links on these websites was almost as difficult as trying to find a needle in a haystack. Out of frustration, I hopped from site to site until I finally found a mobile-friendly website, and within a matter of seconds, I was able to place my order and had my lunch delivered to my doorstep.

My experience perfectly describes the importance of having a mobile-friendly network. If you are a website owner and still think that you can get the best from your website without optimizing it to function properly on mobile devices, you have to wake up to reality! You are losing a lot of valuable leads, which will negatively affect your ROI.

In simple terms, having a mobile-friendly website means that your site is designed in a way that its content can function properly on mobile devices. It means that your text, images, and links can be easily accessible on smaller screens of devices such as iPhone, Android smartphones, or tablets without the users having to pinch and zoom to get a clear view of the contents.

When your website is mobile-friendly, it is easier for users to read the text and navigate the pages on a mobile device. We are in the age of the internet, where consumers are becoming increasingly glued to their mobile phones. 

At the end of 2016, it was confirmed that the number of people conducting online searches from their mobile phones are more than those accessing the internet from their desktops. In other words, mobile internet use surpassed desktop use with a recorded 51.2%, while desktop searches declined to 48.7%.

This means that it's no longer safe to assume that a visitor to your website will be using a desktop to access your content, as they'll probably be using a tablet or smartphone. To provide a good experience for users viewing your website's contents from their mobile devices, you have to optimize your website to make it phone ready.

As a digital marketer or website owner, you must be familiar with terms like SEO and Google ranking factors. Search engines have certain criteria that they use to rank websites, and mobile-friendliness is one of them. As a matter of fact, it is the third most important Google ranking factor!

Google has prioritized mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor because it is aware that there has been a steady increase in the number of people accessing the internet from their mobile phones or tablet for the past five years. Google is focused on providing the best experience for users, and as such, it won't give a top spot to a website that doesn't function well on mobile devices.

 

How does this affect you? It simply means that no matter how great your content is, it may never appear on search engine results if your website is not mobile-friendly. What's the use of having great content if your target audience never gets to view them? This is why you need a mobile-friendly website.

 

The world is not just going digital; more importantly, it is going mobile. It is estimated that three-quarters of all internet users will only access the internet from their smartphones in 2025.

 

Presently, about 2 billion people use the internet exclusively through their mobile devices. That means more than half of all mobile users, specifically, 51% of the global base of mobile users, no longer access the internet from desktops.

 

Do you now realize the level of damage you'll be causing your self if your website isn't phone ready? Desktop use is becoming outdated. To keep up with the trend, you have to optimize your website to accommodate mobile users better.

 

You must have heard time and again that the customer is king. Well, when it comes to digital marketing, the user is king. The kind of experience users have when they visit your site will go a long way in determining your online business's success or failure.

 

About 51% of all website traffic comes from mobile devices! Now take a little time and let that sink in. What this means for your business is that more than half of the traffic to your site are from mobile users. These users expect your website to function well on their phones or tablet. 

 

If they can't get what they are looking for on your site either because the text is too small or the links are too close together, they'll abandon your site and move to other phone ready websites.

 

To make matters worse, losing a prospective lead isn't the only problem you have to worry about when your website is not usable on mobile. You'll also be making a great enemy! When you have a high bounce rate because users can't access the information on your site from their mobile devices, it sends a negative signal to Google.

 

Google will know that your site isn't optimized for mobile when its bots have trouble accessing your site. You'd be penalized for providing a bad user experience, and your ranking will automatically drop.

 

If you're anything like me, you probably can't spend an hour without social media. An estimated 3.6 billion people use social media worldwide! Not million but 3.6 billion!

 

We are in a social media age. There's hardly any information you want that can't be gotten on social media. This means that your business is just a tap away from users. Millions of people can view your status updates, tweets, and company profile across various social platforms within seconds.

 

You can reach a wider audience as your posts can be shared and retweeted by your social media followers.

 

Here comes the sad news. All major social media networks are fully optimized for mobile devices, so you can't run a successful marketing campaign on social media if your website is outdated.

 

Have you ever had a negative experience with a brand, either online or offline? How well did you rate such brands after the encounter? Not much, I presume. The same goes for your users.

 

When users land your pages and have a bad experience with your site, you lose credibility. Users take notes of sites they have a great experience using just like they keep records of the bad ones. 

 

Let's say Mr. A land on your web pages and discover that the texts, videos, or links are not functioning well on his mobile device, and leaves with a bad impression of your site. He then tells his friends and family how bad your site is; this creates a bad reputation for your brand.

 

However, if users have a positive experience when they visit your site, they will also spread the good news, and you'll have a strong brand reputation.

 

 

Half a decade ago, you could probably get away with having a website that's not mobile-friendly, but not anymore! In today's competitive digital environment, you'd be shooting yourself in the leg if you trivialize the issue of mobile-friendliness. 

 

The average internet user has no patience to read the contents of a site that's not mobile-friendly. Once they click on your site and find out that the texts are too small and the links are too close together, they will immediately abandon your site in search of a better option. Why should they go through the stress of pinching and zooming your site when they can easily get the information they want on a competitor's site?

 

It won't do you any good to spend quality time and resources to generate traffic to your site only to lose them to your competitors simply because you didn't take the initiative to include mobile users in your web design. Here's what you get when use Semalt website design services.