Surprise! Mobile devices may now outnumber desktop devices that visit your website. That fact has numerous implications for you and you really need to consider a few things soon. Is your website mobile ready?
How does your website look on a tablet and smartphone?
You need to be thinking about how your website looks on a smaller screen. Does it please you? Does it represent you products and services well? For many, this is the first and only way that your website will have a chance to make an impression visually.
Does your website actually work on a tablet or smartphone?
This may seem obvious, but it amazes me how many really big brand websites are simply unusable on an iPhone or Android smartphones. You find yourself with an hour to get those two new tires for the family car, so you whip out your smartphone, Google your favorite TireJoint.com. Initially things look ok, but as you attempt to complete the page asking for your car info, you get completely frustrated. When this same task is performed on a desktop browser it’s flawless. You see that there is a location 2 miles away, and that they have sufficient inventory on hand to take care of you. Win for the desktop, but major FAIL for the mobile user.
There are boatloads of smartphone users folks!
Have you looked around you lately? Try it. While you’re at the shopping mall, grocery store, restaurant, or even the bus stop, everybody is staring at and interacting with their phone or tablet! It’s not just millennial’s either. Baby boomers are glued to their mobile devices too. Welcome to the future. Like it or not, you need to be able to know beyond all doubt that your website is as fully able and functional as it can be as soon as possible.
Other incentives too
If you want additional motivation to get busy on “mobilizing” your website just consider this: Google is now measuring website performance in a big way. What they are doing with that information is reporting within their rankings in test markets a “web friendly” indicator. This is likely to stick and expand to all of Googledom. Also, it is highly likely that your website’s functionality and performance will affect your rankings, both paid and organic. If that’s not incentive, I don’t know what is.