mobile-friendly web design

For years web designers have been banging on about mobile-friendly websites. But how important are they?

Mobile traffic - visitors using mobile devices to view your website

Over the last few years the percentage of people using mobile devices to view websites has been steadily increasing.

This is especially true of B2C (business to consumer) websites. Around two thirds of all traffic to these sites in particular is from mobile users.

So if you’re a locksmith, hair salon, restaurant, therapist - or similar - not catering to mobile users is costing you business.

Google mobile search

On 21st April 2015 Google changed the way their search engine ranks websites to mobile searchers.

Websites Google deems mobile-friendly are now promoted above those that are not. Therefore, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly you’re essentially being penalised.

So it may be that those mobile visitors never even arrive...

The future

Although mobile-friendly websites have been much talked about for some time, Google’s decision to elevate them in their search results is an important indicator of their importance.

Statistics indicate that mobile internet use will only increase as time goes on.

What is a mobile-friendly website anyway?

Simply put, it’s a website that is sympathetic to mobile visitors. It should display entirely within the bounds of the mobile device’s screen and be large enough to be readable and useable without having to zoom in and out all the time.

It should also avoid (like the plague) elements that aren’t mobile-friendly, like huge images or special plug-ins (such as Flash which won’t play on Apple iOS devices).

Ideally, your website should ‘redesign’ itself according to the device on which it’s being viewed; desktop, tablet or mobile.

How do I know if my website is mobile-friendly?

The easiest way to determine whether Google believes your website is mobile-friendly or not is to use their simple tool. Just type your website address into the following page:

https://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

If your website is mobile-friendly they’ll let you know with some kind words, a preview of how your website looks on a mobile device and a green banner.

If Google deems your website isn’t mobile-friendly they’ll show you a red banner and a brief explanation of why it failed their test.

What do I do if my website isn’t mobile friendly?

You’ll need to talk to your web designer. Ask them what needs to be done to make your website mobile-friendly.

They should include in their answer:

• viewport meta tag - a special instruction to mobile devices on how to scale your pages
• links should not be too close together (to be ‘finger compatible’)
• site speed (massive files will not be popular with your visitors using a poor cellular connection)
• non-mobile-friendly content (like Flash)
• non-mobile-friendly design (stuff that just won’t fit on the screen or be too small to be meaningful)

If your web designer doesn’t mention most of these things, ask yourself whether they’re really up to speed on what is required.

There’s also the added pain that they’ll probably charge you a small fortune to make your website mobile-friendly.

A painless solution

Since 21st April 2015 all our new websites have been mobile-friendly, out of the box, no extra cost.

After all, if it’s important to Google, it’s important to us (and you).

We can offer you one of two options:

• recreate your existing website, mobile-friendly and all
• create a new, mobile-friendly website incorporating all those updates you’ve wanted to do for months

Both come with these awesome additional benefits:

Update content easily and quickly yourself

By the time you’d’ve written the email instruction to your web designer you could have done it yourself on our system. No really. If you can format an email you can update your website; it’s just as easy.

Support on tap

We’re here to help you should you ever get stuck or want to do something a little more advanced. You can do a lot with our system but some customers would rather we did it for them.

Ongoing updates

We constantly update our system to make sure it keeps apace with internet developments. Remember the cookie warning we all had to add to our websites a few years back thanks to our EU chums? Our customers got that free as part of our ongoing updates.

It’s all in the price

Hosting? Domain name renewal? Support? Email? Yep. That’s all-in.

And the price?

From £25 a month plus VAT we can create a mobile-friendly website. No set-up fee. That’s right. You don’t have to put your hand in your pocket until your site is live, you’re happy and the first direct debit payment goes through.

And just to make sure we keep you happy it’s a rolling monthly contract. You’re not tied in to some never-ending agreement.