Mobile accessibility for websites is very important in today’s internet culture. More than 50% of website traffic comes from mobile phones. Considering that is more than half of people, if your website is not mobile friendly it’s likely that you are losing potential customers and people searching for information. Not only that, but your SEO takes a hit since Google considers mobile availability a large part of its algorithm. Here are some benefits to a mobile-friendly site as well as tips to improve its effectiveness.  

Benefits 

First of all, the user experience is greatly improved. Most people have very little patience, especially when it comes to the internet. Humans are notorious for the need for instant gratification and that is easily illustrated by someone browsing the internet. If a website takes a tad too long to load or it looks weird on the phone, 60% of mobile users will usually abandon the page in the first seven seconds. This obviously depletes the chances of conversion, so ensure your mobile site is optimized in order to reap the benefits of a user-friendly experience. Another point to this is to work with a responsive web and mobile design. This kind of design restructures content so its aesthetically pleasing on any device. It also makes the easily changeable if and when design shifts take place in the future. Finally, Google looks at this for ranking and expects a responsive website. So, if you are already working with that, it’s an automatic increase for your SEO.  

The next benefit is a competitive advantage. 1 out of 3 businesses does not have a mobile website. So, make sure you are one of the other two. This competitive advantage can be seen in local markets and specific industries. Oddly enough, a lot of MSPs are behind on the marketing aspect of their business, which usually includes website upgrades. So, for this specific industry, you may have time to get ahead of your competition by deploying this simple addition to your current website. Also, when it comes to local competition a responsive mobile website could give you the SEO boost you need to come out on top of your competitors on Google.  

Tips 

All of this sounds great, right? But how do you get there? There are a ton of different things you can do to optimize your desktop site as well as the mobile site. First is to ensure your website is locally optimized. Make sure you use local keywords, such as the county name… for example, Kern County IT or Kern IT services. Also, make sure you claim your business and link your site on Google My Business. It not only makes Google happy by connecting everything but if people search on things like Maps, they’ll be able to find you easily.   

Next is to optimize your social media to connect back to the website. This way if someone is looking at your Facebook and has interest in your business, they can click on the website via mobile phone and view everything with ease. Also add links to your social media sites directly on your website, so users can easily click on it and have it take them to the platform.  

Another bit of optimization that will be necessary for a mobile site, is pertaining keywords to voice search options. You can check out our last blog on SEO optimization in a voice search era for detailed information. However, it’s important to write certain keywords as they would be spoken. For example, “near the library, convention center” this way if those terms come into play while asking Siri or Alexa, your business is more likely to show up in the search.  

Finally, and probably one of the most important factors is to speed up your website. This is incredibly important for mobile sites to work properly and allow you a better conversion rate. If you go into the back end of your website, most built-in SEO programs will point out your site speed. If it’s slow, it often has to do with images being too large. It is a tedious task, but a simple one to go in a resize all of your images. If your mobile site is slow, its guaranteed to lose users. People are impatient and need instant gratification. In order to be successful, you want to give that to them.

Take some time to go over all of these things and optimize your mobile site. This is quickly becoming simple permissions to play in the website world. Don’t get left behind, tackle that tech learning curve head on and take your business to the next level.