If your website isn’t mobile friendly it will no longer be shown in the search engine result pages (SERPs) when people are searching on their mobiles, which equates to approximately 60 per cent of all users, depending on the country and demographics. You simply will not be found.
There is just no way around it any more. In many countries smartphones have overtaken the number of PCs in use.
In the USA 94 per cent of people with smartphones search for local information on their phones, but the strange thing is that 77 per cent of these mobile searches happen either in the home or at work, places where it is likely that there is a desktop computer available.
*stats from developer.google.com
Google’s main objective is to optimise the search experience for all users to make sure they find what they are looking for. Since 21st April 2015, Google has used mobile-friendliness as a search ranking signal.
How to make your site mobile friendly
There are various options for making your website mobile friendly: either responsive or by creating a separate mobile site. How you optimise your website for mobile devices will depend largely upon the type of business and the products you sell.
Responsive
For some websites it is enough to use what is called a responsive template that scales and “cleans” the information up for mobiles or iPads. There are many advantages to using a responsive template. One of them is cost – it doesn’t have to cost extra as such, if you have included it in the original price of building the website. Of course if your website is old you might have to scrap the complete site, and start from scratch rather than trying to make the old technology become responsive.
The other big advantage is if you update something on your website, the mobile version will automatically update as well. A responsive template takes the main elements of your site, identifies the important information and displays the elements in a user-friendly size for mobile users.
When buying a template for a website that has this automatically done, it is however recommended that you check whether the responsive adjustments are suitable for your business, will serve the right purpose and allow the right call to actions to be set up. If not, you can adjust the look to accommodate it. In general it is an important rule to test and adjust your responsive design regularly to optimise for mobile conversions.
Google actually recommend using a responsive web design as opposed to a special site built only for mobile.
Arcarius Consulting 