The Role & Importance of a Mobile-Friendly Website

Did you know that 53% of online sales take place on mobile devices?

People use their smartphones for much more than making calls and sending emails. 

With an ever-increasing number of micro-moments, mobile devices play a vital role in the buyer’s journey. 

If you want your mobile visitors to become leads and customers, you need to be investing in a mobile-friendly website. 

In this post, you’ll learn why a mobile site is crucial for SEO and some actionable tips you can implement to optimize your website for mobile users. 

Let’s dive in. 

Mobile Technology in its current state

Mobile devices have become a fixture in the lives of billions of people around the globe. 

According to the latest report from Statista, the percentage of internet traffic taking place on mobile is at an all-time high. Nearly 55% of all traffic comes from mobile devices:

Percentage of mobile device website traffic worldwide from 1st quarter 2015 to 1st quarter 2021:

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If you’re not optimizing for mobile, you’re missing out on traffic from search engines. You’re also probably not making the most of the traffic you do manage to generate. 

You’re not competing in today’s digital economy if you don’t make mobile part of your strategy.

Why Should My Business Have a Mobile-Friendly Website

Aside from the fact that you’re only catering to half of the potential customers that visit your site, there are several other reasons why a mobile-friendly website is essential, including:

It’s expected in today’s world

Consumers and business buyers are hyper-connected. They expect to be able to pick up their smartphone and easily find the information and products they are looking for. 

A website that isn’t optimized for mobile can be a deal-breaker. For example, mobile users are 5x more likely to abandon a task if a website isn’t mobile-friendly. 

Contact

A mobile-friendly website makes it easy for visitors to contact your business through click-to-call and email contact buttons. 

The easier you make it for your visitors to get in touch with your business, the more likely they are to do it. 

Google Focuses on Mobile-Friendly Content

This is one of the biggest reasons why you should invest in a mobile-friendly website. 

Google is always focused on its users, and they know that the majority of searches conducted on their platform are now from mobile devices. 

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Google wants to give its users the best experience possible. That’s why websites optimized for mobile have an advantage in search ranking. 

If you give your users a poor experience on mobile, or worse yet, leave URLs marked as “not mobile friendly” to sit on your site unattended, you’re just asking for trouble and poor results.

Mobile Content can be easily shared

Social shares can be a great form of organic promotion that gets your content and brand in front of more people. When a friend or colleague shares content, it also resonates more than if it is shared directly by a brand. 

However, social sharing on desktop can be limiting. For example, many people have mobile-only social media apps like WhatsApp on their phones. 

Your Business will appear more reputable

It only takes one bad experience on your website to damage your brand. According to a recent survey, 57% of internet users wouldn’t recommend a business with a website that isn’t optimized for mobile. 

A mobile-friendly website boosts the reputation of your brand and encourages positive word of mouth. 

Improved UX

For many potential customers, your website will be the first impression of your business. So naturally, you want that experience to be as positive as possible. 

A poorly optimized mobile site is a sure-fire way to frustrate your visitors and make a bad first impression. 

When your site loads quickly and is easy to navigate, your bounce rate will decrease, and people will spend longer on your site. A great user experience can be vital for turning visitors into leads and improving your search ranking. 

How Do I Optimize My Website for Mobile

Now you know why you should be optimizing for mobile, but what exactly can you do to improve the user experience for mobile users?

Here are four actionable tips to make your website more mobile-friendly and encourage mobile visitors to stick around and convert. 

A Responsive Website

The most crucial factor for making your website mobile-friendly is to make it responsive. A responsive website automatically adjusts to the screen size of the website visitor. 

Instead of having two separate versions of your website (one for mobile and one for desktop), a responsive design uses fluid grids and CSS Media Queries to adapt the page. 

Use Heatmaps

Using heatmaps is a great way to analyse on-site user behaviour for your website. You can specifically look at the mobile behaviour to identify any friction points or pages where users abandon the scroll.

Going through this data you’ll be able to come up with new ideas to address any issues found and improve the overall experience on mobile devices.

Relevance of Font Size & Buttons

If your visitors can’t read your text because the font is too small, they’re not going to stick around. Instead, they’ll bounce back to the search results and go to one of your competitors. 

The same goes for your buttons and CTAs. 

Choose a suitable font and text size, and use plenty of white space in your page design to make it easy for mobile users to read your text and tap buttons and CTAs. 

Keep image loaded speed in mind

Page speed is one of the essential parts of mobile optimization. According to Google, if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 53% of mobile users will abandon it. 

For most websites, images are the biggest files on a page and take the longest to load. 

You can reduce the size of image files by using a compression tool. Compressing images minimizes the number of colors in an image without making a noticeable impact on the quality when viewed on your site. 

Keep Pop-ups to a minimum

When used intrusively, pop-ups can be a nuisance for desktop users. 

But they’re even more annoying for mobile users when there is no easy way for them to be closed. If an annoying pop-up blocks half the screen, most people will abandon the page. 

Google has even warned about the use of pop-ups and how websites that use certain mobile ads will be penalized if they damage the user experience for mobile users. 

Avoid using pop-ups for mobile users unless they are absolutely necessary.

Conclusion

We’re living in a mobile age. If your website doesn’t cater to mobile users, you’ll struggle to rank high in search results, and you’ll lose sales by turning away potential customers.

But the good news is that mobile optimization isn’t that hard, and it can provide a dramatic boost to your organic traffic and conversion rates.