The ubiquitousness of mobile phones and a host of other portable devices have entailed the marketing personnel to incorporate this medium in all of their strategies. Research has proven that mobile internet usage has gone a notch above desktop use, and in keeping with this preference, Google is employing this parameter of “mobile friendliness” for ranking your site. Thus, businesses which haven’t given much thought to optimizing their websites for mobile usage may be finding themselves in unsavory waters. Having a “mobile-friendly” website ensures that a site delivers the most optimum user experience for any device that is used. Most websites are still not designed to account for various screen sizes and load times. If people, who use a smaller device to view your website, have to pinch, zoom or excessively scroll their screens in order to navigate, the fiddling could cause great frustration and ultimately reduce the traffic from your site. Once a user suffers from a bad experience, they are likely to shirk your site in favor of a more tech-savvy counterpart. A responsive website design would help expand your reach and keep the visitors engaged. Here are 7 top reasons why optimizing your website is absolutely necessary:
1. Google Favors Mobile Friendliness
Google has recently announced updates to their Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) and search algorithm in support of mobile friendly websites, making it harder for non-responsive websites to show up in search results. Non optimized web pages would be penalized during mobile searches and ranked and displayed accordingly for smart phone users. Without optimizing your site, consumers may not even find your site and business would suffer adversely.
If you are serious about generating organic traffic to your site, you should consider converting to a responsive or dynamic design, or create a separate HTML website designed for mobile users.
2. Increased Conversions
Desktop websites ruin the user experience when viewed on other devices, and are thus ineffective at converting visitors to potential customers. Contact pages get buried in extensive menus, closely jumbled links are harder to tap, and calls to action are often obscured. What is clear and easily accessible on the vast screen of the desktop, maybe hidden and cramped on the constrained space of a mobile device. Mobile users often navigate websites on the go and do not have the patience for such unwieldiness. About 1/3 customers would leave the transaction if the website is not optimized for mobile.
Your landing page is your conversion work horse and helps the most in generating online revenues. To make the most of mobile sales, calls to action should be easy to view and activate, contact information should be the first thing users see, and the landing page should incorporate all the necessary information.
3. Reduce Bounce Rate
Closely spaced content may be discernable on the desktop screen but would be reduced to an illegible scramble on a mobile device. If the users have to zoom or pinch too much to fit your content within their screens, squint to read unreadable text, or if your website runs flash that requires various add-ons to be played, visitors won’t be tempted to linger.
To reduce the bounce rate and keep the visitors engaged for long, you have to provide an intuitive and appropriate user experience to drive them to sales. Ideally, your mobile landing page should contain 5-word headlines, Visible and bright colored call to action buttons, minimalistic design and text, and lightening paced page load speed, to enhance user engagement by almost 85%.
4. Increase Brand Engagement
Visitors associate the experience they glean from your website directly with your brand. When users have a satisfying experience, they are bound to return and choose your site over competitors. 90% of people switch between screens and devices multiple times a day. If your website isn’t designed to handle every screen size, you are bound to leave the customers discontented. While desktop maybe generating the bulk of your sales, users are bound to engage with your site via a mobile browser sometime during the sales process. A mobile experience that has been optimized for consistency and functionality nurtures affinity with users.
Remember that action speaks louder than words. Having a responsive website helps you stand out and present a more contemporary feel to your brand image. Provide the customers what they need or risk losing the bulk of your sales.
5. Mobile Users make up the Bulk of Sales
Mobile users are found to conduct more transactions than their desktop counterparts on average. Smartphone consumers have the lowest dollar amount per transaction, while tablet users have the highest average transaction value amongst all devices. Smart phone users are conditioned to make frequent, small purchases, and are the ideal target audiences for lower value goods. However, if your UI is not up to their standard, they would revert from your site. Mobile optimization cannot only enhance engagement, but also influence your bottom line.
6. Mobile Users are Different
Mobile users do not have the liberty, neither the patient to scavenge content and generally need information in quick, digestible bites. Despite the limited bandwidth, mobile users are attracted by a high amount of social media, especially images and short videos, instead of lengthy text. Harnessing the power of these mediums help keep the consumers engaged.
This highlights the importance of optimizing your website in response to the needs and behavior of the consumers. Since most mobile users make their purchase decisions on the go, providing them with rapid information and simplifying the path to purchase or inquiry, would go a long way.
7. It is more Flexible than App Development
Building a responsive website is generally much less restrictive than app development. In addition, apps are required to be downloaded by the users before they can be used, whereas a mobile optimized website is universal to all contemporary mobile browsers.
The future of search is mobile. A mobile optimized website is the first and the most cost effective step to reaching the consumers and making them aware of your presence, with no barriers between you and the target audience.