The latest news in web design is Google’s “Mobile-friendly” mandate: websites will be “mobile-ready” or lose search rank. In other words, websites must be readable, navigable, and useful on smartphones – or lose their search rank position. Maybe you’ve heard about it? Maybe you’re already experiencing the fallout from the media-hyped “Mobile-geddon”.
- 60% of internet traffic comes from mobile – That’s up from 50% reported 18 months ago.1
- “Mobile-geddon”: If Google doesn’t think your site meets their criteria, you are going to sink so far in the search rankings you will only be found by the very most persistent.
- 46% of people say that website design is the number one criterion for deciding the credibility of a company: If your site can’t be read without zooming or the images don’t align correctly, that feeds the perception that your company isn’t keeping up with the times.2
- Impressive ROI: Jones Soda, a beverage company based in Seattle, saw a 46% increase in mobile sales after launching their mobile-friendly site. For GravityThreads.com, an online clothing retailer, total online sales doubled in the first month.3
- As of 2012, 60% of households with an annual income of $50K-$75K and 71% of those whose annual income tops $75K (Pew Research) use their mobile to access the Internet. Doesn’t it make sense that these are the folks that are going to spend more with you?
Delaying website updates for any reason can harm the reputation of your company and ultimately affect your bottom line. Even if most of your customers don’t use their mobile to research your company, they may be Googling you to find your hours, your location or to learn if you have the product they are searching for. Make it easy for them to find you and to read the information they are seeking.
Have you recently updated your website to be mobile-friendly? What have been the results?
Sources
1 SmallBiz Trends
2 Wikipedia/Stanford Web Credibility Project
3 Mint
4 Pew Research Center
