Why your website must be mobile optimised
Content updated January 2022
With more and more people accessing the internet on a mobile device, your website must be mobile optimised. Whether we like it or not, whether we think it's good or not, it's a fact; more people are accessing the internet for more hours in every day than ever before and a huge percentage of them are accessing it via a mobile device. Mobile optimisation of your website used to be an option; now it’s a requirement.
Impact of the pandemic
In 2018 and 2019, internet access via mobile was preferred over desktop in Australia (note, the "worldwide" stats for this differ).
Prior to the pandemic, year on year, mobile access was greater than desktop. Like many things "pandemic", this changed in 2020 likely due to the massive numbers of people working from home with their laptop/PC continual setup making access much easier.
Why do I need to optimise my website for mobile users?
Despite the rate of mobile access now being closer to (and slightly higher than) desktop access, it is generally considered that once the pandemic passes, the original trend (pre-2020) will continue and mobile (including tablet) access will again, continue to rise above that of desktop use.
With well over 40% accessing the internet via mobile (December 2021 and likely to increase going forward), it's still a huge number of website users you wouldn't want to be missing out on. If you're not optimised for mobile, that 40% of users will be going to your competitors. Think about that for a minute. Surely you will want a slice of those visitors.
The user experience
There is very little that is more unpalatable when searching on mobile than a website you simply cannot read, cannot navigate and cannot comfortably view. It’s time to mobile optimise your site if you haven’t done so already.
If your business uses social media as part of your marketing tool kit, many of your potential customers are accessing those social media sites via mobile. When they click on your post, are you taking them to a mobile optimised URL on your website or back to your website of 1999? If you’re not mobile optimised for your social media visitors, they will abandon you at the drop of a hat.
Google indicated, way back in April 2015, that it would commence initiatives that preference mobile optimised sites in its search rankings. There were several further announcements to prepare you for this over the next several months including a substantial warning in 2016.
In March 2018, Google announced “Rolling out mobile-first indexing”. We're now four years into that so if you haven't acted by now, what exactly are you waiting for.
And going further, in 2021, Google rolled out another massive algorithm all about page experience, which also leads into user experience (UX).
Common problems associated with a non-mobile optimised website
- The text is very small and either cannot be enlarged or if enlarged, creates a nightmare of scrolling up and down and left to right
- Ordinarily, even without enlarging the text, you have to scroll left to right and back again to read the content on your mobile screen
- Phone numbers are not set as “click to call”
- Email addresses are not set as "click to email"
- Images cannot be viewed in full
- Infographics cannot be viewed in full
- Video cannot be viewed in full
- Important content is easily missed because the user simply does not know it is there
- The navigation menu is a direct copy of the desktop version, making it huge and unwieldy, taking up almost the entire screen
- It is an exhausting experience for your site visitor (potential customer)
- Your customers will abandon you
- Google will abandon you
Is your website mobile optimised?
If you haven't updated your website in a number of years, it is highly likely it is not optimised for your mobile users. Even some websites updated in recent years have not taken advantage of the mobile platform at the time of development.
If this is you and you want to attract more business from the massive online community, get in touch with us and we can talk you through your options.
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