A mobile-friendly website is one that correctly displays on mobile & hand-held devices such as your iPhone, Android or Blackberry as well as your iPads & tablets. Also known as responsive web design, these website designs will “respond” to ANY device or display, be it your cellphone or your 46″ LCD screen. This makes for a streamlined experience when viewing the website.
In general, since the dawn of mobile devices and the increasing usability of them to browse the internet, it has been important for many years to update your site to be mobile friendly.
Having a mobile friendly website is very good for SEO for the same reason. Two aspects of a webpage that Google considers in it’s ranking evaluation is Bounce Rate and Click Back.
Bounce rate is when a user doesn’t click through to another webpage on your website. The user will either leave the webpage by entering a new URL, or by clicking a link that will leave the site.
Click Back is when a user reaches your webpage, then realizes that the site sucks or is irrelavent, and then clicks the ‘Back’ button on their browser to return to the original search results.
With these two factors in mind, if you don’t have a mobile responsive website that the user can read, then they will either ‘bounce’ to another site meaning a High Bounce Rate (a bad thing), or they will quickly click back to the search results meaning a Low Click Back Time (another really really bad thing). Google tracks both of these factors will assume that you have bad or irrelevant content, meaning you won’t be ranked anymore.
As of June 2016, to coincide with Google’s announcement of their new mobile testing tool, it’s now more important than ever to also pay attention to the mobile speed score of your website. In addition to simply looking at design elements, Google will now also be looking at the performance of your mobile page as a ranking factor.
Believe it not, many smart phone users won’t even put in the effort to browse a website that isn’t formatted for mobile. And why should they? Odds are they can hop right back to the search results and go to one of your competitors who does have a site that’s easy to navigate.
The mobile-friendliness issue become even more imperative when we step in to the online shopping arena. Online shoppers have quickly started to favor using their mobile devices when browsing and buying products online.
Benefits of a Mobile Friendly Website:
- Streamlined experience across devices
- Positive ranking signal
- Improve mobile conversion rate
- Improved user experience
- Faster download speed
- More flexible and cost-effective than app development
Need help making your website mobile friendly? LWEBG can help!
