Any marketer will tell you—and hopefully, you don’t need to be told—that your company’s website design needs to work well on mobile devices. Whether your site is mobile-friendly (meaning it simply shrinks to scale as a carbon copy of your desktop website) or, better yet, mobile-responsive (meaning the design actually reacts and adapts to different sizes and operating systems), mobile optimization is absolutely essential. Why?
1. Traffic
Mobile users account for at least half if not more of all web traffic. One source suggests that number could be as high as 63 percent. When we talk about mobile web traffic, we’re referring to users visiting your site from a smartphone or tablet. Maybe you’re reading on one of those devices right now. If your site is not mobile-friendly and feels cumbersome to mobile users, you are alienating a large number of prospects and customers each day.
2. Visibility
Recognizing the prevalence and continued growth of mobile web traffic, Google places high priority on mobile-optimized websites in search rankings, even going as far as to penalize websites that are not mobile-friendly. In 2018, Google announced its move toward mobile-first indexing, which was officially implemented in 2020. As explained by search engine optimization (SEO) software provider Moz, mobile indexing means that “the mobile version of your website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index, and the baseline for how they determine rankings.”
To put points one and two together in simplest terms, a majority of users are searching for websites on mobile devices, and whether your site shows up in those searches will hinge largely on its mobile design.
3. User Experience
Google and users alike prefer a mobile-friendly website because it improves the user experience. When your site morphs to a given mobile device, a user can get to the information they’re looking for without hurdles or barriers in the site’s functionality. A poor web experience can lead to higher bounce rates (users leaving your site after visiting only one page). With so many options at their fingertips online to find a given product or service, users have little to no patience for a site that doesn’t perform properly on their device of choice.
4. Content Marketing
Digital marketing revolves around ongoing content creation. When you’re investing in SEO, social media, email marketing and other channels that drive people to your website, you want that content to be easily accessible and consumable on mobile to get the most out of your efforts. Remember, more people are viewing your website on a mobile device than on a desktop. Mobile optimization is not an afterthought; it is a must-have for any business or brand.
5. Conversions
Web traffic is great. Conversions are even better. Ultimately, a mobile-friendly website is one that leads visitors from homepage or landing page through purchase or contact form. All through that journey, the mobile experience has many minutiae where it could falter and lead to fall-off. Let’s make sure your website is truly and thoroughly made for mobile. See our web design and development samples here.
