Did you go mobile friendly!

Back in March according to Google, unless you seriously improved your website’s mobile experience there would be a direct consequences in mobile search results.

Why?

Well Google was worried about the experience of users when they search on mobile, which prompted them to make mobile-friendliness a ranking factor in their latest update.

2015 has been the year that saw mobile internet use rise above 50% of the total for most businesses. This means that people accessing your website on their mobile could be struggling with viewing your content and contacting you because your website is not appropriately optimised.

So failing to improve your mobile site, according to Google could see 50% of your total organic traffic disappear with serious consequences on your bottom line. 

To have your site replicated on mobile but with a responsive feature (when there is no need to zoom) is now old practice. Mobile friendly is so much more than responsive because it offers a faster and more casual experience. You should expect a modified version of the site, specifically targeted at mobile browsing which has stark differences from normal web browsing. Not just because of the smaller screen sizes offered by smart phones but also due to the different attitude and intent of the user.

Responsive web design is basically an alternative to having two versions of your website. Instead of having two versions optimized for different devices, you have a single website that adapts itself (responds) to the device it is being viewed on. This saves you the trouble of developing the website twice, gives a more consistent user experience since all features are present (unless you explicitly hide them on some devices), and it is better for SEO.

A responsive web, mobile friendly web design relies on a set of core principles:

• Fast Loading
• Viewable
• Touchable
• Actionable

Mobile devices often have limited bandwidth. That means, that if your website is slow to download, users will get annoyed and will perhaps not use it. Therefore you need to think about making your website fast to download.

On both desktop and mobile devices it is natural for users to scroll vertically, but annoying to scroll horizontally. This is even more true for mobile devices. Therefore you have to make sure that your website's content is viewable with little or no horizontal scrolling. Mobile devices have smaller screens than desktop computers which means you will have to resize and stack the content on mobile devices to make it fit their smaller screens.

A mobile friendly website has to be touchable. Links and buttons have to have a size that is easy to hit with a finger. Smaller links, icons, buttons are not a problem to hit using a mouse, but it can be really hard with a finger.

In addition to being easy to touch, the most common actions must be easy to perform without too much clicking and scrolling around. That is what it means that the website has to be actionable. This is especially a challenge on the smaller mobile devices.

Next steps…

There are two ways for you to check whether your website is mobile-friendly

1. Use this mobile-friendly testing tool from Google and enter your URL.
2. Just Google your brand using a smartphone. If you see a grey “mobile-friendly” label next to your site, then you’re all fine and don’t need to worry.

In today’s world, if your website is not fully responsive to allow your visitors to visit your website via their computer, their tablet, or their mobile, at a time and a place when they want to, then they will go elsewhere and you will lose their custom.

Whether you like it or not, it is all about the customer experience and more importantly consumer behaviour!

It would be interesting to know how many people made these changes when Google made the statement, also what effect it has had on your business, if your have made the change or not?

SOURCE:
http://social-media.co.uk/
http://tutorials.jenkov.com/
http://www.dtw.co.uk/