Your Website is Broken, it Looks Terrible on a Smart Phone – Just How Critical Is Mobile Optimization?

Mobile is hot right now.  Here’s the thing, you are very likely to be approached/solicited by web companies saying something similar to “your website is broken, it looks terrible on a smartphone”.

They are trying to sell you their services of course.  They also happen to be right most of the time, in fact, 91% of all websites are not mobile optimized.

This does not mean that your website does not work on a mobile device.  It just means that your site has not specifically been designed to give the user a special, easy-to-use, visual interface on a mobile device.

Is this critical?  No.

Is it a good idea to have your site updated for mobile users?  Yes.

You Will See This or Similar

Report: 60 Percent of Internet Access Is Mostly Mobile

This is somewhat misleading in that it represents all forms of internet access, not necessarily search.  It includes Social Networking such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, text messaging, streaming music, and similar.

While the level of internet access associated with people accessing websites is not as extreme as suggested above, there is no doubt that there is a significant proportion of your clients that are using mobile devices.  Also, this is only going to increase over time.

Mobile Optimized Site Example

Here is an example website that we recently built for a client that we have optimized for mobile devices.
http://www.solpaletas.com/

• First, take a look at it on a regular computer, then look at it on your cell phone.
• Now take a look at your website on a smartphone.

Mobile Optimization in Context

Bottom line, it is probably a good idea to have us update your website and create a mobile enhanced version.  However, we need to keep this in context.

Depending upon the type of business you have, you are probably receiving less than 10% of your visitors from mobile devices (restaurants & physical local stores may receive a higher percentage).

Therefore the effort and cost associated with mobile optimizing your site should be balanced with your overall marketing strategy and budget. There may be much more urgent and important things to focus on.

It therefore makes sense first to analyze exactly how many visitors you actually get from mobile devices.

Things that may be More Critical to your Business

Be an expert or go home!

• Be an expert that people want to learn from

In order to be competitive, your website has to be THE source of intelligence and learning associated with your market.

 

Websites that educate their visitors to convert much better.

Also, consider:

1. Do you have a strong local listing strategy?
2. Are you driving online reviews?
3. Have you implemented a good video marketing strategy?
4. Have you engaged in social sites that are relevant to your business to reinforce and promote your content?
5. Is your site optimized properly for the right search phrases for your target market?
6. Is your website conversion optimized?
   • When visitors come to your website do you make it easy for them to do what they came to do?
   • Do you specifically ask them to take the action that you want them to take?
   • Do you give them a reason why they should?
7. Have you implemented ‘Schema’ on your site to call out key information?

Depending on your business type some or all of these factors may be much more important and urgent than mobile optimizing…

However, we do recommend getting around to mobile optimizing your site over the next 12 months or so. Think of mobile optimizing as one small part of the list above, specifically number “7”.

Mobile Optimizing Your Website

It may be necessary to completely re-build and redesign your site. Most older websites simply just do not lend themselves well to being mobile optimized.

There are different technologies used for mobile optimization such as ‘M.‘ which is an older and somewhat outdated technology.

Adaptive Web Design (AWD) is theoretically the best (newest tech) but very hard to get right and maintain and you can expect 5 – 10 x cost to develop a good mobile version of a site.

If absolute control is your priority and you have plenty of budget (technical staff) Adaptive Web Design may be for you.

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is a relatively new technology but it has the advantage of being straightforward and easy to implement.

We use a hybrid Responsive Design implementation to allow us to create mobile-specific layouts and features for mobile devices that scale well based on the screen size of the visitor.

Google recommends using Responsive Design. This is mainly because implementations of Adaptive Web Design tend to be implemented poorly simply because it is so difficult to create properly.

Don’t forget User Intent is often Quite Different on Mobile

Lastly user behavior (intent) on Mobile Devices is often different. For example, a user searching with the keyphrase “bank” on a computer may well be looking to research different banks for their services or conduct a transaction. On a mobile device, trying to transfer funds is at best difficult.

A user searching with the keyphrase “bank” on a mobile device is much more likely to be looking to find the nearest bank, call the bank, or find the nearest ATM.

In optimizing for mobile, understanding differences in “user intent” is a key aspect of development. A large, easy to press, “Click to Call” button may be the most important part of the design.