In case you haven’t looked lately, it’s almost certain that at least 40% of your website traffic is now coming from mobile devices. This is up from about 25% only a year ago. If you are still working off your old website that isn’t mobile friendly, it’s time to think about a responsive website, and you need to do it sooner vs. later.
If you don’t have a mobile friendly site, a good chunk of those 40% of visitors mentioned above are likely finding it hard to navigate, getting frustrated, and leaving to one of your competitors. Not so good.
What’s more is that mobile visitors aren’t just browsing anymore – they aren’t the “tire-kickers” that many of our clients have perceived them as in the past. They are interacting and filling out inquiries right from their mobile devices. If your site isn’t as easy to use on a phone as it is on a desktop, you are losing business.
Let’s back up. A year ago we would have said that mobile is a growing part of your traffic and should not be taken lightly. But it was still common behavior to use a mobile device for browsing and then switch over to a desktop or laptop for more serious research and interaction. This behavior has changed, right quick – and we’ve watched it happen just over the past 6 months.
Late last year we released a lead tracking system for our clients that helps track ROI and not only where leads are coming from but if they are paying off. As we have been crunching the data we have noticed an increasing amount of people filling out forms from their mobile devices. Some clients are seeing over half of their leads come from mobile devices – something we just didn’t see a year or so ago.
A Mobile “Version” of Your Site Is a Bad Idea
Some people might respond here and say, “My web developer made a separate mobile version of our website. Wont this suffice?” This *might* be fine, but it will cost you more in the long run and it requires more setup to make sure Google can find all your content. If you want to make updates to your website you are doing it on your main site and now your mobile site too, so you’ll need to pay for twice the updates because there are essentially two sites out there.
In our experience a responsive site, which is built to adapt to whatever device it is being displayed on, is the better way to go. You make updates only once and all your content is at a single URL for Google to index.
Ultimately your website needs to be device agnostic. PC, Mac, iPhone, Android – whatever. It needs to work well in all of them. The user experience needs to be nearly flawless and most importantly, no matter what device someone is viewing your site in, it needs to be easy to reach out to contact you.
