Guest Post: 3 Reasons Your Business Should Build a Mobile-Friendly Website

January 06, 2017

by admin

mobile-friendly

This post contains a sponsored link from Web.com.

It’s time to get serious about a mobile-friendly website for your small businesses. Let’s face it: Millennials were raised on technology. And some of those Millennials actually have kids now – kids they’re raising with technology, too. If you come across someone without a smartphone, iPad, or notebook of some kind, you’ve just discovered a rarity. People are no longer glued to their televisions or computer screens – their attention is on these smaller screens, and small businesses must build websites that fit within these tiny dimensions. Here’s why.

1. The Numbers Support the Idea of a Mobile-Friendly Website

According to Google, the numbers have supported the need for mobile-friendly websites for years. Their users, which are the majority, conduct their online activity from their handheld devices. If a user is launched into a mobile-friendly version once they enter the URL or click to it from search results or other link options, 74 percent of them are more likely to return to the site in the future. If they landed on a site that didn’t accommodate their device, 61 percent left. Of those who stayed on a site formatted for the smaller screens, 67 percent made a purchase. What does this mean for you?

2. Customers Expect You to Be Mobile Friendly

If you haven’t jumped on board with this trend, you will be left in the Information Superhighway’s proverbial dust. Your customers, current and potential, expect to be able to access your website on their mobile devices – period. Small business websites must be built to be user-friendly once the URL is downloaded to a small screen. If your website does not do that, a majority of visitors will click away, and they will click away within the first six seconds of their stay, which means they won’t even take the time to see if they want to visit your site from their desktop or laptop at a later date.

3. Google and Other Search Engines Expect Your Site to Be Mobile-Friendly, Too

Google and many of the other search engines also expect you to build a mobile-friendly interface, and if you don’t, you may be penalized in search results. Part of search engine optimization today is that your site must be mobile-friendly. Your navigation structures, images, videos, and other elements must download quickly and easily onto a small screen. Because Google “spiders” your website to determine where it should rank in its results, it sees your structure. If it doesn’t like it, you’ll end up on the latter pages of the results, which directly affects how you’re found in cyberspace.

You might be asking yourself, “Why does Google care? It’s not Google’s business how I build my website!” but ultimately it is, because it’s Google’s business to return search results its users want. If it doesn’t, they’ll go to another search engine provider, so you can see how your website affects how Google ranks you. This is why so many Web builders, whether you use one or a professional service, take into search engine optimization for your Web page and your social media.

If you do not know how to build a mobile-friendly website, however, all is not lost. Your web developer can help you format your pages for the small screen and get you higher in the search results, noticed, and most importantly, keep people on your page and coming back.