Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The Importance of Optimizing Your Mobile Website

The internet has arguably been the most revolutionary platform that has brought people together from all corners of the world. Today, we can say that the world is truly becoming a global village. The degree of connectivity is intensifying and people can interact on a real time basis. Traditionally, the internet has been accessed through PCs and laptops. However, the landscape is changing and mobile devices such as tablets, mobile phones and iPads. With this change in access, there lies a huge potential in using these interfaces to grow your following and sales.

Research shows that the amount of time and money spent through mobile devices is doubling or even tripling every year. As a business, having a mobile-optimized website is crucial to your success. At the moment, mobile traffic accounts for about 12 to 15% in global internet traffic. As the years go by, the number of people using mobile phones will exceed that using PCs to access the internet. The purchases that the consumers make through mobile devices are well into billions of dollars in the United States alone. By 2015, Gartner projects that the purchases made online through mobile devices will reach $31 billion.

Importance of Mobile-Optimized Websites
Despite the robust statistics about mobile devices and how they drive sales, many companies are still in the deep end as far as mobile website optimization is concerned. Very few businesses are launching mobile-friendly websites and this cuts them short from the potential that is in the market.

Mobile Optimized Sites Lead to Mobile Purchases
If you are a business and sell your products online, having a mobile site that is optimized will lead to an increase in mobile sales. Shoppers will most likely buy from your site because of the experience it gives them. If your site is not optimized for mobile, buyers will have a difficulty interacting with your products and even in navigating. This is a turn off.

More Competitive in Your Industry
Having a mobile-optimized site will ward off competition therefore protecting your tuff from competitor inversion. Surveys done on mobile shoppers have revealed that if they cannot locate what they are looking for on your website, they will ship out to the competitor next door who has a more mobile friendly website.

Enhance Your Business Brand
In online shopping, brand is just about everything. A poor mobile experience is a sure killer of your company’s brand. Buyers will go on spreading the bad feelings and experience they have had on your site to others and this can go viral.

Hiding Mobile Elements
Hiding mobile site elements will affect your search rankings. It is common for responsive design to hide elements especially when viewed through smaller screens. Unfortunately, Google is aware of this and they take it into consideration when ranking sites. Site footers, for instance, do not display on mobile screens. Instead, you can create a jQuery dropdown menu that has a site map. This will keep your content usable and accessible without taking up screen space.

Mobile Penalty for Slow Page Load Times
Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, revealed that they are in the process of rolling out ranking factors that take into consideration speed of mobile sites. This follows the 2010 announcement that speed is a critical search ranking factor that Google will take into account. A tool at Google I/O will be used to monitor the speed and load times of mobile websites. Sites that load slowly will definitely see a demotion when it comes to ranking of search results. It is therefore a concern for business owners that they have their business sites mobile optimized to cash in on the opportunities of mobile business.

Contact Website Optimization to learn more about mobile website optimization.

Website Optimization
3134 SUNNYWOOD DR
ANN ARBOR, MI 48103
Phone: (877) 748-3678
Fax: (734) 661-1331
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/
https://plus.google.com/108123505155721216764/

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