Many business owners have moved away from the traditional type of website to a more mobile-friendly website. They have seen the functionality and streamlined efficiency of communicating with users through a smartphone as opposed to a desktop or laptop computer.
In fact, almost three in four visits to a website comes by way of mobile devices as recently as 2021! Does anyone still think mobile isn't here to stay? Better think again!
What We Mean by Mobile-Friendly
There are primarily seven reasons to make sure your site is ready for mobile. Before we get into them, however, let's make sure we know exactly what we are talking about.
- Mobile app: not a mobile-friendly website! These are apps built for speciality platforms like Apple, Android, and Amazon.
- Mobile responsive: these are sites meant to function the same regardless of the device they're on. It's a step up from mobile apps, but not quite mobile optimised.
- Mobile-friendly: these sites were built with mobile in mind. They will show up with far fewer bugs than any other type of website.
Now that we're clear on the differences, it's time to discuss why your site needs to be mobile-friendly above all else. Let's scroll!
1. Mobile Is the Present and Future
A mobile marketing strategy has become essential to every form of small business. That's because the majority of Internet users are now turning to their phones to access the online presence of a business rather than a desktop website.
It's been that way since about 2016. As smartphones have grown more sophisticated (and addictive), businesses have come to understand that it's a trend that won't be going away any time soon.
2. Search Engine Preferred
Designing business websites for mobile has also become the norm because search engines prefer it. Substitute “search engines” with Google, and you've got pretty much the same statement.
That's because Google sets the tone for how pages rank as the most popular of the online search engines. Google made its official move to mobile-first indexing in early 2020. Other engines like Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo followed suit.
3. Mobile Makes Transactions a Breeze
Buying with smartphones was somewhat tedious when the first smartphones came along. Most e-commerce solutions were still set up for desktop, and the user experience of those was clunky at best.
As users began to spend more, however, there was a sea change. The rise of apps like Venmo, Cash App, ApplePay, and the mobilisation of PayPal made sending money and paying for goods and services as easy as sending a text message. Smartphone software upgrades followed suit and gave business owners more of a reason to include a mobile payment option.
4. Boosts UX
So much goes into creating a quality user experience for your audience. For starters, they click through to your website not to be bombarded by one annoying popup after another. They go there for the content, particularly how that content will help them to solve a problem or scratch their itches of curiosity.
Desktop Internet sites never seemed to get that message. That's why so many spammed their users with a popup after popup for years on end. If you were lucky enough to get past the popups, you might have to deal with intrusive advertising that only served to slow down the loading time.
The mobile experience has cut back on much of these annoying site design principles. Mobile-optimised sites now put the content first and foremost, and they make it easy for users to fill in forms or scroll past ads without it slowing down the site.
5. And Creates More Shareable Content
Mobile sharing makes sharing content a lot easier than it used to be. For starters, as established, that's where everyone is and how they're accessing the majority of the news, opinions, and advertisements they consume.
Secondly, many sites now allow users easy account creation through one of their existing social networks of choice. That makes sharing as easy as clicking a single button or two.
6. Mobile Is Way Cheaper Than Creating Your Own App
Mobile-friendly websites are way better than mobile apps as well for two reasons. Firstly, any changes that you make to your website are immediately available without having to be accessed through another portal. Secondly, the app functionality is tied to the most recent updates of the platform where they are published.
If Apple or Android changes their software, you have to make sure you're patching those discrepancies as well. Some updates to your app can take a delayed amount of time to show up, leading to a buggier experience than if the site was merely accessed through a mobile browser.
7. Mobile Helps You Better Emphasize CTA Info
Every website, mobile or otherwise, needs to have a call to action or CTA, that can allow users to easily share their information. Email addresses are the primary form of data online, and a mobile-friendly website makes it really easy to share one.
In fact, users who have their data saved in a program like iCloud or Amazon Cloud Services might be able to autofill the email capture box with the click of a button. Additionally, mobile can incorporate easy-to-use communication methods such as texting and chatbots. Provided it's built into the mobile website design, this can be a really easy way to maximise the effectiveness of your site.
Having a Mobile-Friendly Website Is No Longer An Option
We hope you can now see the usefulness of the mobile-friendly website design. It's a design that puts the vast majority of your audience first. It improves their experience, whether as financial consumers or consumers of content. It obliterates archaic web design principles like intrusive advertising and annoying popups.
Last but not least, it makes a company's brand more shareable, easier to update with new information, and provides a smoother means of directly connecting to leads and customers. Are you ready to experience the full power of mobile design? Schedule an appointment with Jumpworks today to see how we can make an impact on your business!
