It’s a FACT…

mobile devices have become the must have item for daily life across the planet. Think about when you reach into your pocket or purse and your phone is not there, you now get the same panicked feeling you used to only get when your wallet was missing. All “MY STUFF” is in there!

A little over 10 years ago it was just a phone and convenient to have to let someone know you were running late. Then the almighty iPhone came and it was such a cool novelty to not only be able to make a call and text message but now you could play games, listen to all your favorite music and even pinpoint you exact location on the planet in a matter of seconds. Now, everywhere you look people are walking around with their faces glued to that little screen everywhere they go and are actually annoyed when it takes more than 10 seconds find that restaurant their friend told them about, book their reservation, order their meal and have it sitting there ready to eat when they arrive at said restaurant. It sounds crazy when you think about it but now these devices have become so integrated into everyone’s life that they expect to find whatever they’re looking for instantly. If they happen to be looking for your product or service and find they actually have to use the fingers on their other hand to resize their screen so they can read your phone number, more likely than not, they’re going to feel inconvenienced, click the back button with their thumb and go to the next site that provides the same product or service. In fact that’s what about 44% of mobile users do and it’s only growing. The expectation now when someone finds your site is that it’s already formatted for what ever screen size they find you on.

Google thinks this is important too…

In April of this year Google began notifying the web world about their new algorithm update that will have a major impact on mobile search results. Being referred to within the industry as “Mobilegeddon” the result of this update means that google’s search engine now ranks mobile friendly websites higher in mobile searches and non-mobile friendly sites will start dropping down the in their rankings.

What is Mobile Ready?

With the number of people walking around with smart phones in their hands every day the “web on the go” need is expanding quickly. Websites that were designed to look great on your desktop or laptop browsers doesn’t mean they’ll look good and be easy to navigate on the smaller screen of a smart phone. Even if you have a clean simple design that gets to the point, navigating it on a mobile device may require a good amount of zooming in and scrolling to read a sentence or see all the button in your menu.

To have a mobile friendly website means it was developed on a scalable platform meant for adjusting to different screen sizes. One simple way to tell if your site is mobile friendly from your desktop is to use your mouse or trackpad and simply resize your browser window, drag it to the left so it’s as wide as your phone screen and watch what happens. What did you see? Did all the elements rearrange as you went to fit the viewing area or did everything to the right simply get cut off? If your answer is “everything got cut off” your site is not mobile ready.

Why Do I Need a Mobile Friendly Site?

There’s a lot of reasons why your site should be mobile friendly. Here’s 5…

1. Better mobile search rankings. As I mentioned earlier, “because google said so!” – mobile friendly websites will rank higher giving you a better chance of being found while non-mobile ready site will begin to fall in ranking and fade off into the sunset.
2. Lower Bounce Rates: Even if someone visits your site because they saw an advertisement or someone gave them your card, the average person is now expecting to be able to view your site and get the information they need without having to resize their screen or scroll side to side. So much so that about 44% of visitor will simply move on if they have to pinch and zoom or squint their eyes to see your content.
3. Better Customer Engagement: 90% of people report using multiple devices when trying to complete a task. By offering a better mobile experience you will greatly increase the likelihood of that same person re-visiting your site later from another device like their desktop or laptop.
4. More traffic! By the middle of 2014, mobile usage overtook desktop usage for the first time in the history of the internet. Now that people are finding you with their mobile devices you are at risk of losing over 50% of your visitors if your site it not mobile ready.
5. What everyone really wants. MORE SALES! Recent research shows that customers are 51% more likely to do business with a company if it has a mobile ready site. Although desktop site still account for more online sales, mobile is quickly catching up and most likely will surpass as some point in the near future.

If your site is not mobile ready yet, it’s not too late.

MortHub Web Design can rectify this for you. We’re the experts at helping businesses make the move to mobile!  Contact us today or schedule a FREE Online Strategy Call today!