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The trend towards mobile-friendly website design has been building for years, but it’s about to get serious! Google is taking the first steps towards penalizing websites for being non mobile-friendly. But why?
A 2012 Google survey of mobile users found that 72 percent say it’s important to them that websites are mobile-friendly, yet 96 percent have visited a site that doesn’t work well on their device. Almost three-quarters of respondents said they are more likely to revisit a mobile-friendly site. Users are five times more likely to abandon the task they are trying to complete if the site isn’t optimized for mobile use, with 79 percent saying they will go back to search and try to find another site to meet their needs.
Initially this new effort is aimed at making it easier for people to find the information that they’re looking for the first time. Therefore, Google announced this week that they have added a “mobile-friendly†label to their mobile search results.
“We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.”
Why Is This Important?
It’s that second line in the quote that is raising a lot of eyebrows, as this is a serious indication of a push towards penalization for non mobile-friendly sites. Many businesses invest hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars per month on developing and tweaking their content for superior SEO. Without a mobile-friendly design, this money could be wasted if/when Google begins to rank sites based on their test results.
So How Does Your Business Stack Up?
Google has created a Mobile-Friendly Test where you can see if your website passes the following list of criteria:
- Avoids software that is not commonly read on mobile devices (like Flash content on your iPhone).
- Website text is large enough to read without zooming.
- Responsive content resizes to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom.
- Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.
If you want to make sure that your page meets the mobile-friendly criteria:
- Check your pages with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
- Read their updated documentation on their Webmasters Mobile Guide on how to create and improve your mobile site.
- See the Mobile usability report in your Google Webmaster Tools, which highlights major mobile usability issues across your entire site (not just one page).
- Check Google’s How-to Guide for third-party software like WordPress or Joomla, in order to update your website to a mobile-friendly template.
Does Your Website Pass?
If so, congratulations! You’re riding the wave of mobile change and I’m sure your users appreciate the experience. Concentrating on monthly SEO content should still be on your list of top priorities.
If you failed this test, don’t hit the panic button just yet. This is certainly cause for concern, but for now Google is simply offering a mobile-friendly tag in their results. Let this serve as a notice that the time is now to make the push towards providing a better experience to the growing base of mobile users. For some, this will just require adjusting a few key areas of your existing site. For others, a complete redesign and restructure of the entire website will be in order, which requires proper planning and expert implementation.
What Now?
Now, we will stress again that Google is not yet ranking pages based on these test results, but it’s a clear warning that this is on the horizon. The good news is that the Marketing Team here at TCS excels in mobile-friendly website design! From small businesses to large enterprises across multiple verticals, we have achieved superior results for our clients. If you are looking to upgrade your web experience, we would love to hear from you!