The importance of a mobile friendly website

The growth and advancements in mobile technology is having a direct impact on our daily lives.

Mobile technology influences the way we search, interact with our friends, the way we shop and consume information. We now have the ability to instantly access information and communicate with each other on the go without being restricted by location.

Mobile sales have already overtaken desktop sales and it is predicted that during 2014 mobile internet usage will overtake desktop usage. With people already spending more time using mobile devices than they are watching television and with 1 in 4 searches now being made on a mobile device, it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to make sure their web presence is fully mobile responsive. Doing so will make sure your business is best placed to capitalise on the benefits of increased mobile usage amongst your customers.

What is a mobile friendly website?

Just being able to view a website on a mobile device isn’t enough. To be truly mobile friendly the website layout needs to be responsive to smaller screen sizes and pay attention to the user experience, the navigation and other design features which may work well on a desktop computer but could become cumbersome on a smaller screen size.

The main objective with a mobile friendly website is to provide a user experience which allows the visitor to quickly access key website information in an easy to navigate manner and in a format that is suitable to the device it is being viewed on.

However many websites still fail to provide an adequate mobile user experience.

What are the benefits of a mobile friendly website?

1. Better for your visitors

If visitors to your website can gain easy access to the information they are searching for then they are more likely to interact further with your website, your products, services or brand.  By not having a mobile responsive website you are effectively putting a blockage between yourself and customers on mobile devices.

2. Better for search

Mobile friendly websites are naturally more efficient. They should be faster to load, use the same HTML structure and have one URL format regardless of the device they are being used on. From a search engine point of view this means they are easier to access, crawl and index due to a better website structure. With Google recommending that website owners, designers and developers pay closer attention to the user experience, it is well worth taking this advice on board. It will give you a competitive advantage over other websites that aren’t mobile compliant.

3. Better for your conversion rates

With increases in mobile device usage it stands to reason that providing a better mobile user experience will enable visitors to access information, products or services far easier than those that don’t. By catering for mobile users this can lead to more online sales and enquiries which will ultimately contribute to your business’s bottom line.

Freshfield’s Digital Bootcamp series

What does this mean for my brand? The world of digital marketing evolves extraordinarily quickly, making it very difficult for busy marketers and business owners to keep pace. Help is at hand in the form of Freshfield’s monthly Digital Bootcamp blog, where our digital consultants answer our clients’ queries in a simple and straightforward manner. If you have a digital marketing question for us, e-mail it to  hello@freshfield.com.