Anyware Web Design Tips:-

"Mobile Friendly Website":

WHAT IS IT AND DO I NEED IT?

With the recent announcement of Google and all its press coverage we thought it would be a good idea to cover this topic in this month's Sales Tip.

What is a "Mobile Friendly" website?
Note: URL means Uniform Resource Locator - this is the address of a web page (your internet address).

Firstly there are three different types of "mobile friendly" websites:-

Responsive Web Design is a website design that adjusts gracefully to fit on any desktop, tablet or mobile. Watch our quick video to see how responsive web design works.
You only have one URL which can respond to its environment.
Adaptive Web Design is where you have replica URL's that have been adjusted so that when a person searches, your server host detects which website to show i.e. if a client is searching on a mobile it will show the mobile website, if a desktop the desktop website. From the client perspective they will see no difference from the responsive web design as all the work is done "behind the scenes". Because you have in effect two websites you will be required to pay for two web hosting charges and have two separate SEO Campaigns.
Separate Mobile Website is where you will see a sub-domain from your main domain say m.anyware.co.nz (which doesn't actually exist) but would if we had used this style of mobile website. Again this means that you in effect have two websites and accordingly web hosting charges & SEO Campaigns are as above.

Do I need a "Mobile Friendly" website?
Google's announcement that they will be demoting websites that are not mobile friendly starting April 21st 2015 relates to mobile searches only at this stage. If a person is searching for something on a mobile Google will rank those websites that are "mobile friendly" above those that are not, regardless of which "mobile friendly" version it is.
That said, Google has made it quite clear that it prefers the responsive web design as they believe it gives the end user a more positive experience. Google has also stated that "with only one URL is easily crawled by Google bots, indexed and done with fewer on-page SEO errors" resulting in a website that tends to feature more prominently in the main SERPS" (Search Engine Results Page). With Google having around 65% search market share in 2015 their recommendations should not be discounted lightly.

From a business perspective the main questions you have to ask yourselves are:-

What percentage of your business/searches comes from either a mobile or tablet? Your Google Analytics will help you obtain this information.
Where do you see the trends going in your business - will your future prospects/clients be using their mobile/tablet to search for you?
Does your website cater for clients moving forward?

To help you here are some statistics for you from Wikipedia, Mobile Life Study (both 2013) and Mobile Marketing Statistics (2015) & Google:-

As at 2013 New Zealand had 4,922,000 mobiles for a country with a population of 4,430,000.
60% of New Zealanders now have smartphones (an increase of 33% from last year).
19% of our population now have tablets (an increase of 7% from last year).
42% of smartphone users browse the internet daily. 64% of smartphone users use their devices for social networking, 25% of those use them daily. From a business perspective one of the most important aspects of social media is that 20% of users are seeking pre-purchase validation from their friends via social media.
More than 20% of Google searches and over 50% or local searches are performed on some sort of mobile device.
61% of mobile visitors are likely to leave a website immediately if they get frustrated or cannot find what they are looking for.
67% are more likely to buy a product or service if they have a positive experience.
51% of users multiscreen - research on desktop and mobile.
Of the top 100,000 website 11.3% are already responsive (10,510).

So, what do all these numbers mean? It could mean:
If you sell products or services to consumers then you should have a mobile strategy and an optimised website for mobile. As consumers turn to each other for social validation you had better be in touch with your social side as well.

This is something that is not required for your business at this stage.....but will it be required in your future?
Mobile sales have already overtaken desktop sales. It is only logical that mobile search will overtake desktop search at some point in the near future as well.

ONLY YOU KNOW WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS
(But we can help you figure it out with a phone call.)