It’s a little surprising to know that many among the hundreds of millions of websites in the world are not mobile friendly. By not mobile friendly, we mean these sites don’t look good on a mobile device or worse, do not load properly on a smartphone or a tablet.
In a world where mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are just about everywhere, it doesn’t make much sense for a website, especially a business website, to not be mobile friendly. If anything, a business should take complete advantage of the opportunity provided by the mobile device boom. Here are a number of reasons why your website has to be mobile friendly.
1. Staggering mobile web use statistics
Let’s allow the statistics to speak for themselves:
- More than a billion people surf the web using their mobile devices.
- Global mobile traffic now accounts for 15% of all Internet traffic.
- Smartphones are used by 60% of mobile shoppers while in a store.
- Mobile-based searches make up ¼ of all searches.
- Mobile local ad revenues will grow from $1.2 billion in 2012 to over $9.1 billion in 2017.
There are tons of other mobile web statistics out there, but I won’t cite every single one of them because I believe you can already see the picture.
2. Mobile users will find it easy to read your content
As previously mentioned, sites that are not mobile-ready do not show up well on mobile devices. You don’t really want to ask potential customers who access your site through their mobile devices to pinch and zoom so they can see your content properly, do you? If you do, then prepare to have your website dumped by mobile users just a few seconds after accessing it.
3. Your competition could have a mobile friendly site by now
You don’t need to be a genius to figure out what would happen if your competition has a mobile friendly website and you don’t.
4. Mobile customers want instant information
Customers bring their smartphones and tablets everywhere they go, and use them to make purchasing decisions all the time. They are going to want instant information about your products or services at their fingertips, and only a mobile friendly website can help you with that.
5. Traffic to your site will surge
If you think your non mobile-friendly site has big enough traffic now, imagine how much bigger it’s going to get when people can readily access and enjoy your site on their mobile devices.
5. Google is penalising non mobile friendly websites
You read that right. Google is penalising non mobile friendly websites. If your site continues to be non mobile friendly, you can expect it to be pushed farther down in search results. Your pagerank will also suffer. Conversely, that means mobile-friendly websites will eventually outrank those that aren’t.
6. Mobile is the future
All signs indicate that the mobile boom is just going to get bigger in the near future. So why fight it when you can be ready for that future right now? It’s not like it’s the most difficult thing to do. If you already have a Joomla or WordPress website, all you need to do is add a component that would make your site show better on any sized mobile device. If that’s too techie for you, you can always ask your web developer to do the tweaks for you and make your site mobile friendly.