In the industry of website designing, a responsive website is one which automatically adjusts to the device on which it is being viewed; be it a smartphone, tablet or a computer. In the past nonresponsive sites frustrated consumers with the inability to read text or view images. On the 21st of April, 2015, Google’s mobile algorithm was officially updated to rank websites in the search engines basing on their responsiveness. This means that responsive websites have higher odds of being in the top results.
More to Read for Google Mobile Friendly Update:
The Google’s New Mobile Friendly Update Makes it Easy to Find Mobile-Friendly Web Pages
What actually changes?
When the update takes effect, general search results on the Google mobile devices will yield the most popular, most mobile friendly websites in ranked order instead of the most popular, organic results. All the websites which aren’t listed as “mobile-friendly” sites may drop down the list of search results if the fail to update their web pages after the update takes effect.
Why mobile-friendly matter?
Basing on the statics acquire from ComScore.com, the number of desktop users worldwide is surpassed by the number of mobile users by almost 200 million people. As a result, it is now essentially a necessity for business owners all over the world to have mobile-friendly websites.
In 2014, Google released an independent study which focused on local businesses and the potential customer’s search activity while on the go. The results of the study indicated that 72% of customers that searched for local information using their smartphones went to a store within 5-miles. Also 50% of consumers how performed a local search using smartphones visited a store within 24 hours.
According to the Google, nowadays having a great mobile site is essential for developing long-lasting consumer relationships and building strong brands. Generally, Google wants to be an effective resource for internet users that are the move. When people aren’t sitting behind their desks, they usually rely on smartphones and tablets to perform web searched. The inclination towards mobile devices is growing and Google has no intentions of missing out that demographic.
Fixing the problem
If you don’t want your website to leave it current position of prominence during mobile searches, there are preventive measures that you can take. If you want to test the present compatibility of your website, you can use the Google mobile-friendly analyzer tool.
If your website turns out to be “non-mobile-friendly”, there are some schemes that you can carry out so as to pass Google’s mobile-friendly test. You may:
i. Increase the size of the sit’s text.
ii. Decrease the width of the page.
iii. Space out in-page links.
What should you do now that Google’s Mobile Algorithm has been launched?
i. Monitor the mobile-friendliness status of your website using Google’s mobile-friendly test. Additionally, Google Webmaster Tools has a number of features that you can use; for instance, crawl error, mobile usability report, and others.
ii. Monitor the traffic of your website so as to determine the real impact of this update to your site. If you discover even a small impact, deal with it immediately as it (the impact) may add up significantly thereby causing you to lose large sums money because your website isn’t visible in search engines.
iii. Test your website yourself on different kinds of tablets and smartphones to see how well it performs on mobile devices. During the process, try making a donation to your organization; if that doesn’t work well, then just know that it (your website) needs to be adjusted accordingly.
iv. If you have reasons to believe that your site is not mobile friendly, contact your website vendor. If it (the websites) is somewhat new, inquire from them whether the site is designed to be “mobile-friendly”. If they are familiar with the term and say yes, it’s probably fine; otherwise, to be on the safe side, just get a new vendor right away.
Is it sufficient to have a mobile-only site?
It isn’t recommended to rely on a mobile-only website; what is recommended by Google is a responsively designed websites, as it guarantees that a website can totally adapt to the device that is being used by the consumer. Besides, responsive design saves you time as you don’t have to duplicate efforts across 2-websites.
Conclusion:
If you work hard to optimize your customer’s mobile experience, you are probably going to benefit a lot from this update’s launch. If you have a great desktop website but are lagging behind on the mobile, your desktop ranking won’t be affected. Nonetheless, having a mobile mobile-friendly website benefits every business.
Consumers have a tendency of abandoning the brands for which they struggle to look at their products, make purchases or contact the site owners when they are on their sites. Implement responsive design now to avoid unimaginable losses due to a fall in mobile traffic to your website.
