Mobile Friendly Sites Have Never Been More Important - LaunchUX

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Mobile Friendly Sites Have Never Been More Important

In 2016, it was reported that 51.3% of website traffic came from mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. The typical computer usage in that year was 48.7%. It is nearly 2019 and not surprisingly it is estimated that mobile usage is now nearing 60%.

With mobile usage on the rise and already dominating internet usage, it make sense that search engines, especially Google would consider a mobile friendly site over a site that does not work well on mobile. Remember that search engines want to keep people using them. The fight for market share is real (although Google is winning). To keep people using their search engine the user experience is a key factor. Most users will bail from your website within 10 seconds or sooner if it does not load well on their smartphone. I am sure you can think of a few sites you pulled up recently and closed because they either looked awful or were difficult to use. If your mobile you want information quick and you want it to look nice on your screen. Google knows this so looking awesome on mobile devices really matters.
Now if you are not mobile friendly, there are a variety of ways to get there. Ideally you would want a web developer to` guide you in the right direction. Not every site is the same so it is important to reach out to someone that can help if you are unfamiliar, but there is something we can do.

Do I have a Mobile Friendly Site?

Friendly Mobile WebsiteWe can check to see if your site is mobile optimized. It is so important that Google has a Mobile Friendly Test to help website owners see if they meet the standards or not.  You can check your site for free at https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly.

Let’s check a few sites and see what the results look like and trust me they make it easy to tell and also provide a lot of good resources as well.  To the right you can see the results of a scan on our site.  This is what you will want to see.  It means that you have an optimal user experience on mobile devices, which will help the success of your digital strategies.

Website that is not mobile friendly

For comparison let’s do a scan on a site that is not mobile friendly. As you can see on the left, it is identified as not mobile friendly, but if this is what you find from your test of your domain, Google provides suggestions on what to fix to make your site more mobile friendly.

Conclusion on Mobile Sites

As mobile usage of the internet continues to rise, being mobile friendly becomes less of an option and more of a need.  How you look on mobile is important.  In 2015, Google announced an update called by some as “Mobilegeddon” that placed a higher importance on mobile sites.  While it was not a devastating to non-mobile friendly sites as many had feared, it is not 2018 and mobile friendliness is becoming increasingly vital for optimization from both a search and user experience point of view.

 

 

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