why-it-is-important-to-have-a-mobile-friendly-websiteAround 2.5 billion people worldwide use a smartphone; this figure is expected to exceed 6 billion by 2020. The time these people spend using the Internet on their smartphone is around the same as time spent using a desktop. Bearing all of this in mind, it makes sense that you should enable people to access and use your website from a mobile device.

If you are speaking to a web design professional about creating your website then making the website mobile friendly should automatically form part of that discussion. If you already have a website then you need to make sure it is completely accessible on mobile devices. So why is it so important that your website is user friendly? We have already shown you the numbers for smartphone use; but they are not the only reason why you need to make sure your website is mobile friendly.

What is mobile friendly?

First, let’s take a look at what the phrase mobile friendly actually means. It’s obvious that looking at content on a mobile device is a very different experience to looking at content on a desktop. Your website may look great on a computer screen but could be very difficult to read on a smartphone screen. The problem is that people are not going to persevere for long if they are trying to browse your website; if it’s at all difficult they will quickly lose interest. This is why you need to ensure that your content can easily we browsed using a mobile device; this is what mobile friendly means.

Mobilegeddon

In April 2015, Google introduced an algorithm update that became known as mobilegeddon. The aim of the algorithm was to enable mobile friendly websites to appear higher in mobile searches than non mobile friendly websites. You can see how this alone is a good reason to make sure your website is user friendly. Google defines a mobile friendly website as one that:

  • Does not use software that is not commonly found on mobile devices; such as Flash.
  • Makes use of text that users can read without the need to zoom.
  • Ensures content is sized to fit a mobile screen.
  • Makes links easy to tap by spacing them appropriately.

Other reasons you need a mobile friendly website

You can already see that you are losing out on a large slice of potential website visitors if you do not make your site attractive to mobile users. You can also see that you stand the chance of achieving lower search engine rankings. There are two more reasons why it is vital for you to have a mobile friendly website. The first is that they are faster; a non mobile friendly site can take an age to load on a mobile device which is off-putting for the user. The second reason is that the overall experience for users is not as good if your website is not mobile friendly. If you are running a business or organisation then you want the user experience to be high quality so that people remain engaged with your brand.

We have shown you why it’s so important for your website to be mobile friendly. All you have to do now is make sure that it is.