Ever since April 2015, Google’s search engine algorithm began to account for mobile friendly search. Many of our clients ask us why this is important and how they can find out if their site is mobile friendly. Join us as BSO Digital discusses the importance of mobile friendly sites and what we do to get your site mobile responsive.
1. What is Mobile Friendly?
What does mobile friendly mean? Basically, it was in response to the overwhelming number of people who use their smartphones or tablet devices to access the internet. In Australia alone over 80% of people use a mobile device over a laptop or PC. As a result, your website needs to scale properly on a number of different devices. This is known as “responsive design” which makes your website mobile friendly.
2. Why is Mobile Friendly Design Important?
Since April 2015 Google’s algorithm changed to give preference to sites that are mobile ready. This means sites that are not mobile responsive will be pushed lower in the rankings. This is due to the fact that Google wants to present the best possible results for its users. And if your site does not give a great experience across multiple devices, then Google is going to rank you lower than a competitor who does have a great, responsive site.
3. How Do I Know If My Website is Okay?
Web developers, like BSO Digital, have access to tools and data that can show you how well your website is running and its effectiveness on mobiles and desktops. You can also do a quick triage test through Google using their mobile friendly testing tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly
If you are unsure whether your site is mobile friendly, or if your site came out as not mobile friendly after running the Google tool, contact BSO Digital today to discuss how to make your site responsive.
4. Who Can Help Make My Site Mobile Friendly?
Hiring an expert web design and development team is the best step in getting a functional, beautiful mobile responsive site. Studios like BSO Digital handle both design and development aspects in-house, meaning you will have a stunning, responsive website in no time. An expert team can also work with your existing design or design elements to get you mobile responsive without a complete website facelift!
5. Be Mobile Responsive from the Start
If you are planning a new website, then it is the perfect time to start designing a responsive website. It is much easier to create a mobile friendly website from the start than trying to apply mobile friendly features to an already existing site. Designing for accessibility from the start is also far less costly in the long run. It allows you and your web designer to create a unified look and feel no matter what device your customer is using. Further, responsive themes scale easily from desktop to laptop to tablet and mobile and feature auto image scaling so users are not confronted with a cluttered interface.
6. Keep Your Mobile Friendly Design Simple
When working with smaller screens you need to remember to make it easy for users and customers to navigate and access information in a smaller format. This means streamlining content, scaling down images, and making menus easy to access, especially on phones.
7. Always Keep the User in Mind
It is vital that you always keep the end user in mind when you design for mobile devices or rework your existing website to make it mobile friendly. Make sure the most important information is accessible first. For a restaurant, that may be the phone number and location. For a clothing store, that may be a menu of their top product categories.
If you are not sure what your most important data categories are, use Google Analytics. Google Analytics will show you what customers are looking at, what terms they find you for, and what information is important for them. Confused by how to utilise Google Analytics? Contact the team at BSO Digital today. Our team are verified Google Partners who can help you make the most of Google for your business.
8. Check Site Speed
Aside from responsive design, site speed is the second most important indicator for Google. Remember, users on mobile devices are limited by both speed and data plans. If your site is not fast enough, they will likely leave it for a competitor. While some elements of improving site speed, like compressing large images are easy to do. However, you will need to discuss compressing and minifying CSS and Java files, adding a cache, and other complex coding elements with a professional web developer, like those at BSO Digital.
9. How Long Does It Take for Google to Pick Up on Changes Made to My Site?
There is no definitive way to tell how long it will take for Google’s bots to recrawl your site. In some cases it can take only a few hours, in other cases it can take a week or even month or two. This can depend on how your Google Analytics are set up and whether you have submitted a new sitemap to Google. It is best to discuss this with your website maintenance expert. Don’t have one? Come chat with the team at BSO Digital to discuss how we can help you as Google Partners.
