By Tracy Andropolis -By now, most of you have learned about the importance of having a mobile friendly website and while some of you have already adapted your website and marketing strategy to be mobile friendly, some still have not. And I am sure there are those of you who aren’t even sure if your site is mobile friendly or not.If updating your website to be mobile compatible is something you have been putting off because it’s not in the budget, or if you’ve been too busy doing other things, you may want to consider bumping it up on the priority list. Google recently launched a major announcement, beginning April 21st, 2015, when conducting a search via your mobile device, Google search will not only label your site as being mobile friendly, but will also use that as a ranking factor. Google says this will have a significant impact on mobile search results. What does this mean to you? It means that if your site is not mobile friendly your website may just fall off the face of Google mobile search results. Yes, your site could end up in a search wasteland (cue theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly). Considering the fact some of our clients see as much as 40% of their traffic coming from a mobile device, this could have direct impact on your business. What can you do? First thing you should do is test your site to see if it is mobile friendly. This is really easy. Google has this handy tool -- just copy your url into the search box, click “analyze” and Google will test your site and give you results. Here is that link: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/If you pass the test you will see a message that says “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly.” Like this:
If you did not pass the test your results will return with, “Not mobile friendly”. It will also list what the issues are and give you suggestions on how to fix it.
Since it is Google, the “King of Search”, they have some awesome resources to help you get your site to where it needs to be and how to optimize search results for mobile. Starting with this Google Mobile Sites Guide.
One final, yet very important point. What is better, Mobile Site or Responsive Design?
First, a quick explanation on the difference.
A Mobile Site - is a separate website that is designed to look good on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. They have a separate domain name/url from your main site. So, literally you have two websites that you are managing; your desktop website and your mobile website.
Responsive Design - is a website coded and designed to alter the rendering of the page to format to the device the site being viewed on.
At Tweak we strongly recommend and only do responsive design websites for the following reasons:
At Tweak we only do responsive design websites but we have been doing so since inception. We do not “charge extra” to design a mobile friendly website, it’s just the way we do it because we know it is the right thing to do, for you and for your business.
If you have questions about your website, or if you’ve run the test and found it is not mobile friendly, or if you’re just not sure what to do, call us. We’d love to help!
Tracy Andropolis Web Design & Digital Specialist
