Why It’s More Important Than Ever To Have A Mobile Responsive Website
Ready to get started? Call us on 0118 380 0201.
Ready to get started? Call us on 0118 380 0201.
When it comes to using the internet, this year marks the first time that users on mobile phones have outstripped users on desktop computers. This means that more than ever, websites must be optimised for mobile browsers in order to offer users a greater browsing experience. For the majority of ecommerce businesses this is vital – their whole operation could be made-or-broken on the strength of their website. If a user can't access what they need, theyaren't going to be converted into a customer, are they? So you can see why it's important to create responsive websites in order to progress an online business.
Seeing this mobile trend forming, on 1st April 2015, Google unleashed their 'mobilegeddon' algorithm that is designed to promote 'mobile-friendly' websites in their rankings, whilst leaving non-mobile-friendly websites at the bottom of the pile. With search engine marketing being one of the key aspects that attracts visitors to your website (not to mention Google being the most-popular search engine) – you can see what an impact that this code could potentially make to your ecommerce business if your website isn't mobile-friendly.
Here are some key facts about Mobilegeddon
With the vast difference in technology between what a more-powerful desktop computer can do, compared to a mobile phone, browsing the internet will be a somewhat different experience. You are able to create a mobile website, but this will be a separate entity to your desktop version and will contain fewer elements – something which may put off many businesses. To combat this, there are ways to make your website responsive to mobile, without necessarily losing the 'essence' of your website. In fact, your business could be enhanced, as you are able to offer your services to a much wider audience.
Here we'll look at how you can make mobile websites responsive;
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a cost-effective marketing technique that is able to give your ecommerce website a long-term presence in a search.
Here are the areas that you need to look at if you want to achieve successful SEO on mobiles;
o Parallel. A parallel mobile website is a completely different version of your desktop website that has been created specifically for mobile phone users. Creating a parallel website will allow businesses to concentrate on offering mobile-specific content to their users (for example, mobile apps that they can instantly download and run etc). Whilst the amount of time and the cost invested may be high, if you want to run a website operation that appeals to all users, then this is a logical design to undertake.
o Dynamic. The nature of mobile browsers is that many are completely different and are able to display different elements in different ways to each other. A dynamic serving website allows a connecting server to display its pages in a way that the device dictates. This offers users a custom browsing experience – as they will all be on the same URL but it'll be the device that will take responsibility for how the website is displayed. You are able to incorporate different elements for different devices (for example, different content for different devices etc), not to mention the job of only maintaining one website. Then again, running a dynamic website requires an advanced knowledge of websites, in order to build and maintain, not to mention being expensive to run.
o Responsive. The technique of responsive web design allows the mobile website to display the exact same website as the desktop version (as it contains the same code) but the difference is that the mobile site will conform to the size of the screen of the device, rather than expanding into the same size as it would on a desktop (which explains why many websites viewed on mobiles, crash). Many businesses choose this method for the cost-effectiveness, speed of turnaround and because it'll prove easier to maintain – freeing up time for them to concentrate on something else. Google recommend this particular method.
o Write headlines that are short, but still convey your message that the main body of your content explains.
o Summarise the points that you are talking about in the opening paragraph – this will make the reader 'look forward' to an aspect of your content as they read on.
o Break up the main body of the content into small paragraphs to make it easier to read (especially for those who are browsing on mobiles)
o Use mobile-friendly images so no large pictures that will take a long time for a mobile browser to download and display. The same goes for the type of image file you use – for example a .jpg will be displayed a lot quicker than a .bmp version, because the size of the file is better compressed.
o Compress the website. Use a software application, such as Gzip, which is able to reduce the size of the countless CSS, HTML and JavaScript files that are present on your website. Simply – too many elements for the website to process, will slow the loading speed down.
o Reduce HTTP requests. If a server has to look through a massive pile of pages to find the right one, it will take some time. However, if there are just a handful of pages – it'll find the right page more quickly. Reducing the amount of HTTP requests will help to make your site run quicker on any browser, simply because it doesn't have to do a lot of searching to display the page that was requested by the user.
o Don't block external JavaScript and CSS before your page is rendered. This will cause a delay in rendering your page, slowing its loading time and probably testing the user's patience!
o Rich Snippets are a description of your website that is displayed under the link and URL of your website. This gives you a great opportunity to express why the user should visit your website.
o Rich Cards are displayed above search results and contain information from a website about a specific query. For example if someone searched for 'how to stop wasps from entering my home' they will be presented with a number of rich cards explaining the steps, along with a link to the full page of the website it has taken the rich card from. This method is especially helpful if you offer any services that people will ask questions of.
As mentioned, pages that are marked with rich cards will be displayed at the top of SERP – this vastly increases the likelihood that the website will be visited by people who are interested in your content and would like to know more. According to Google, rich cards are only available for 3 types of content – articles, videos and recipes.
If you stick to these tips, then you'll be well on your way into producing a quality, bespoke, responsive mobile website that will help your business to carve out a place on a search engines' listings.
We are proud to have a vast experience in offering ecommerce solutions that includes SEO as well as designing quality mobile and responsive websites for all types business. Extremely knowledgeable, our experts are here to advise you on how to get the maximum potential out of your website, which can only help to improve your business in the long term.
For more information on how we can help to improve your presence in a search engines rankings, please contact us on 0838 050 2700 or send us an e-mail at sales@advansys.com