Have you checked how your website looks on your smartphone or tablet? Is it sleek and functional or is half of your page missing? Having a website that works on mobile devices is more important than ever before, and if your site doesn’t fit the bill, you’ll lose customers. A responsive site looks great on all devices.
If you’re already adding up the cost of hiring a web designer and thinking that you can’t afford to make the change, then here’s some good news for you. You can get a new, responsive website for next to nothing.
Over Half of Website Visitors Use Mobile
In 2015, Google confirmed that more searches took place on smartphones than on desktop or laptop computers in 10 countries including the U.S.
Current statistics show that mobile phone users now account for 50.3% of worldwide website traffic.
In addition to being able to use your website on their devices, mobile users need sites designed to load quickly. Mobile users are already at the mercy of their network speed, and non-responsive sites that take forever to load won’t give these users good service.
When smartphone (and tablet) users navigate to a non-responsive website, they will more than likely bounce right back to the search results to find a site that gives them a better user experience.
Search Engines Expect Mobile Friendly Sites
Users aren’t the only ones who expect websites to be mobile friendly.
Search engines, including Google, signaled their intent to favor mobile friendly websites a number of years ago, and in 2015 Google launched it’s mobile-friendly algorithm.
Moovweb tracked 1,000 of the top e-commerce keywords across a range of industries after the launch of the new algorithm and found that 83% of the time, the top search result returned was for a mobile friendly site. And 77% of the sites on page one of the mobile SERPs were mobile responsive websites.
What does this mean for your business?
Your potential customers searching for your products or services probably aren’t finding you very easily when they search with their smartphones. If they can’t find you, they can’t buy what you’re selling.
How to Get a Responsive Website
Getting a responsive website for your business is incredibly easy. So easy, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to make the switch from your clunky old desktop focused website.
All you need to create a website that looks great on your customers’ smartphones is the WordPress content management system running on your server, along with a responsive theme and you’re good to go.
How much does WordPress cost?
A big fat zero. That’s right, using the best responsive, content management system on the planet is really easy on your wallet.
Getting to grips with WordPress isn’t difficult and you’ll find plenty of guides and tutorials online to help you master the basics. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to set this up yourself, you can hire a freelancer for an hour to get everything set up for you.
One thing that you should probably leave to an expert is getting the content migrated from your existing website to make sure that your pages don’t drop out of the search index and your backlinks still point to the right places.
So, if you need to make the switch from a website that looks great on desktop but fails miserably on mobile, you know what to do. Making your site mobile friendly could have a bigger impact on your bottom line than anything else you do this year.
