Why having a Mobile-Friendly Website is Important
With an increase in clients logging on from a variety of different devices and phones, it is more important than ever that your website can meet your user’s needs and that your customer’s journey can be accessed at any point, from any device.
In this blog post, I aim to help provide general information and key considerations about the importance of a ‘Mobile-friendly’ Website, what it is, why it’s important and how to test your own website.
What is a Mobile-Friendly Website?
A mobile-friendly (also known as responsive design) website is one that is designed to display properly on smaller screens & hand-held devices such as your mobile phone as well as iPads & tablets. These website designs will respond to any device or display, whether it’s your phone or a 46″ LCD screen. A mobile-optimised site adjusts to the smaller screen size and formats the content and interface in a mobile-friendly manner. These websites are easy to read and navigate when viewed on a smaller screen.
A responsive website looks good across all devices
Here are some of the benefits that a mobile-friendly website includes for your user:
Larger text that is easier to read, resizing to fit within the screen
Mobile-friendly navigation (For e.g. the “hamburger menu” - three horizontal lines - that forms the standard navigation drop down menu on your phone)
The buttons are bigger and easier to click
Faster download speed
A non-mobile-friendly website requires zooming and scrolling to find and read information. Text can appear too small or words and images can run off the page. Images are hard to see correctly and links difficult to find or click.
Why is it important to have a Mobile-Friendly Website?
Mobile devices and apps account for more than half of digital traffic according to recent studies. This will vary depending on your industry, but on average, most people see anywhere from 25-60% of their traffic coming from mobile (In Ireland the figure is currently sitting at 63.23%). Even if we take the lowest figure of 25%, that’s a quarter of your potential clients so it’s probably worth paying some attention to.
Mobile-first indexing has a direct impact on how your website ranks and how much organic traffic flows through your website
Google now crawls the mobile version of a website first to evaluate its content and design and determine its relevance to numerous searches. Mobile-first indexing has a direct impact on how your website ranks and how much organic traffic flows through your website. With mobile-first indexing, you have the opportunity to connect with even more people actively searching for your business on a mobile device.
Here are some benefits to having a Mobile-friendly Website for your business:
A streamlined experience across devices
Good ranking signal
Improve mobile conversion rate
Better user experience
More flexible and cost-effective than app development
How to test your own website
It is clear to see that having a mobile-friendly website is crucial. Here are 4 easy ways to check your site:
Use Google’s Mobile-friendly Tool
You can test how mobile-friendly your website is with Google’s Mobile-friendly Tool
Google’s Mobile-friendly Tool allows you to test your website
Enter your website’s URL under the title, “Is your web page mobile friendly?”. You should receive an answer after a few seconds. If your page is usable on mobile, you’ll see a page like this:
If your website is Mobile-friendly, you should receive this page
2. Use your Phone
One of easiest and most accurate ways to test your website is to check it out on your own phone (and perhaps your friend’s phone too). Type your URL into the web browser on your phone. Does it look clear, can you read the text easily enough and how well can you navigate to the various pages on your website? Are the buttons easy enough to click on without accidentally clicking on another element on the page?
Take a look at your website on your own phone to see what your client’s experience will be
3. Use your Desktop
To test your website’s responsiveness on your desktop, open your website on your browser of choice. To resize the window, place your mouse cursor over the edge of the window until the double-headed arrow cursor appears, then drag the border to reduce the window size gradually. You’ll notice various elements on the page automatically adapting to suit the changing screen size. This is great and will give you an indication of how it looks across various devices.
4. Use the Responsively App
The Responsively App is free to download and is a really helpful tool which allows you to preview all target screens in a single window side-by-side. The app mirrors your interactions across the screens. Any click, scroll or navigation that you perform in one device will be replicated to all devices in real-time. So you can simultaneously check what your users will see across their respective devices. It has 30+ built-in device profiles covering all major devices.
Using an app like Responively can help you preview your website across various devices
Ultimately, a mobile-friendly website is a wise investment that can really benefit your business when utilised well. It can make the user’s journey seamless and create a sense of authenticity and trust in your service because there is an ease of accessibility that surrounds your website design. Knowing that a website is mobile-friendly allows users to interact and engage with your brand across devices, without being annoyed or inconvenienced. This increased accessibility is key to creating long-term loyalty and customer retention.
