A few weeks ago, Google made a big move to up to the importance of mobile-friendly website. This means that Google will now be looking at how your website renders on mobile devices and weighing that in where your site will show up in mobile search results. It is no surprise, since mobile web traffic from now accounts for 48% of all of their web traffic.
Researching and shopping on mobile devices both are on the rise, and Google’s Mobile Path to Purchase report is very revealing. According to the report, 59% of consumers research a company via their mobile website, visiting, on average 6 times before making a purchase. The majority of that traffic (74%) starts with a mobile search engine, like Google. But other avenues play a role: in the apparel and beauty category, 38% of shoppers start on a mobile search engines, 31% start on a mobile branded website, and 21% start on a branded app.
To see if your website is mobile-friendly, test it out using Google’s handy tool. And if it is not, it might be time to consider taking action.
Another thing to keep in mind is the speed of your mobile site. Even if you do have a mobile site already, if it is too slow, it is not very mobile friendly. If Google detects that it takes too long for any of the resources on your mobile site to load, such as slow JavaScript, it will count that as a point against you. To check the speed of your mobile site, use the PageSpeed Insights tool.
Deciding whether to completely redesigning your website or just make your site mobile friendly will depend on a few factors, such as:
- When is the last time you redesigned your website?
- What content management system (CMS) do you use?
- What marketing activities do you currently have in motion?
- How much of your business or leads are generated online right now? How does this compare to your goals?
- If your business is seasonable, is this a good time to redesign, for example, before your busy season picks back up?
- Have you worked with someone to map out how to optimize your website to automate as much of your marketing as possible?
Also one last resource to check, Google Webmaster Tools will show you how many of your webpages are mobile friendly. If anything comes back as “Should Fix,” these are recommendations to consider in either fixing your current site or to keep in mind if redesigning your site completely.
(And as an aside, there have been several recent updates to WordPress in the last few weeks so it is important to make sure you have the latest version installed – 4.2.2. – as of this posting. This is very important for both speed and the security of your website.)
If you have any questions about this or would like to talk about your current website, contact us. We’re happy to talk with you.
