The extent of mobile phone use in modern society can be illustrated by the answer you give to the following question:
Is there ever a time that you look amongst a group of people and there isn’t at least one person on their mobile phone?
Not in my experience, and this just shows how reliant we are on our mobile devices for accessing the Internet. We love using our mobile phones to book appointments, find a phone number, or even settle a trivial argument with friends! Our personal experiences of mobile use should exemplify how important it is to make your website mobile friendly for your clients to get the best out of their experience. If this hasn’t already convinced you, on the 21st April 2015, Google will be introducing a ‘mobile-friendly’ ranking algorithm, which will spur SEO-savvy businesses to make their websites mobile responsive. This development has not been a surprise for many, with almost 60% of searches being performed on mobile devices it would seem to be the natural progression for Google’s ever-developing algorithms to take.
It may be that being aware of the extensive and increasing use of mobile phones has been enough for your business to have already moved into the world of mobile-friendly. However, for many it has been resisted until this development means that it will now be essential for you to have a mobile-friendly website to continue to produce high-ranking results and avoid being penalised.
Mobile-friendly specification can be met by having a mobile site, but Google recommends developing a mobile responsive site. This means that your main website can be viewed on a mobile. Things to consider when creating a responsive site are utilising font scaling for different screen sizes and making touch elements such as buttons easy to navigate using fingers. These factors will be considered when Google is ranking your page based on its new algorithm. Do not fear – you’re not on your own! Google has created some useful tools to help you test your website for mobile-friendliness, these are the Mobile Usability Report and Mobile Friendly Test. The former is a Google Webmaster Tool, and the latter is a URL specific tool. If you find that your site is lacking in the mobile-friendliness department, contact us at Reflect Digital and we’d be more than happy to have a chat about how we could help!
I personally believe that this development from Google is a wise move, allowing mobile users to get the best out of their use. There’s nothing more annoying than struggling to use a desktop site on your mobile phone, and if businesses show that they are making the effort to simplify and optimise my visit to their website then we all win!
