The eyes of the average computer users are definitely drifting from desktop screens and toward their hand held devices. According to recent studies 64% are looking for product and contact information online, 74% require easily accessible store operating hours and directions while 50% expect all actions performed on the main website to be done seamlessly from their smartphone too.
The good news: You have a website that is already accessible through a hand held device with a browser. Bad news: Your site is not easy to read via the said hand held devices.
Without a mobile friendly website waiting for your prospective and current clients, you are virtually welcoming them with a slap in the face and telling them that customer service is not a real priority to you. Below is a list of things that your current website design could be doing to turn away your valued clients.
Creating a Terrible Browsing Experience for Your Users
When clicking on a non-mobile-ready website link, it is easy for it to turn into a painful ordeal. This is because clicking on a link leads to a different page from the intended, since links are too close to each other and small.
Plus, most websites are designed for viewing on large desktop screens and the font sizes become too small to view on the phone making most content difficult to read.
You should not put your web users through this ordeal while navigating through your site. Your customers would rather a company that has taken the time to adapt their web design to mobile devices rather than just put up a website with no optimisation whatsoever. It is important to your business not to be on the losing side when your clients choose your competitor over you.
Placing Video Content On A Website That Won't Display On Mobiles
In short, some of the video content placed on websites will work on computers and not on phones. The most notable is the flash video format. This format is very popular in desktop browsers, but does not work on e.g. apple smartphones like the iphone and ipads - and Apple have a 13% share of the smart device market in 2013.
The best alternative to display videos is using HTML5 standard tags, which are easy to work with and come highly recommended by Google. Ensure that your users can fully enjoy your website across any device by providing them with watchable content all the time.
Your Ranking Takes a Beating in Search Results
A few months ago, Google decided to punish all websites that are not optimised for mobile devices. This means that your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) rankings are likely to drop if your website design is not mobile friendly. On the other hand, this is good for the mobile-ready websites, since their own rankings will considerably improve at the expense of their competitors.
Bad Advertisements Lead to Less Money
Advertisers are always willing to pay top dollar for any advertising that works for them. In the event your website is great at driving ROI for marketers with advertisements on it, you will inevitably see handsome returns in terms of RPMs (Revenue per thousand advert appearances) and higher bids.
Conversely, ads that do not perform will have an opposite blow on your bottom line. Desktop ads on mobile devices will not be of high quality, performance and engagement as mobile designed ads would have, consequently leading to poor competitive pricing and low RPMs.
Since advertising is a great source of income, you have to look into the long-term outlook by preparing for mobile ad monetization. With the mobile take-over happening now, fighting the change or being stubborn will only make it harder for you to rake in revenue.
5 More Reasons Why You Should Create a Mobile Friendly Version of Your Website
Millions Of Potential Customers
According to recent studies, there are now 17.4% (http://mashable.com/2013/08/20/mobile-web-traffic/) individuals using the mobile web. This is too large an audience to ignore.
Smartphones Outsell PCs
Smartphone sales are rapidly increasing every year and for the first time beating PC sales.
Mobile Sites Reach All Types Of Audiences
Apps are great, but you have to create one for each platform you intend to target. This means one for Blackberry, one for Android and another for iPhone. They also have to be installed and users are required to download them whenever they need to use them. With mobile web, all phones have browsers, you only need to maintain and update one version (one website) and all information is available with just a single visit to that website.
50 Million People Check E-mail Via Mobile
What better way to reach your audience than catching their attention through their inbox. By adding a few links to the emails, your customers will be able to see your mobile optimised website and any particular page or product that you are trying to show them.
Reach Your Clients On The Go
Great customer service means making your site accessible to your clients on the go. Without a mobile optimised site, the only way clients can view your site is when they sit down. Meaning that they will likely pass up the opportunity and view your competitor’s mobile optimised site first before they get to your own.
Considering the importance of a mobile site, it is important to have a serious discussion with your web designer in Dublin, like www.myit.ie, over how you can make your current website more user-friendly - and get the entire mobile website update to pay for it self in extra sales in a few weeks.
