On March 26th Google announced that they started migrating mobile-friendly websites to mobile first index. Now Google will use the mobile version of your website to crawl (using their Smartphone Googlebot), index and determine your rankings in Google itself. It’s now official, if your website is not mobile friendly, and has slow loading speed, this will affect your search engine rankings and visibility in Google.
When Google migrates your site to their mobile index, you will also receive a notification in your Google Search Console
When it all started.
In 2016 the inevitable happened. Mobile searches took over desktop searches for the first time. More people are now spending time browsing the internet from their mobile phones. And there’s nothing more powerful than being visible in everyone’s pockets.
We are going to answer the most commonly asked questions here. These will help you make an informed decision as to whether you should convert your website to mobile friendly or not.
What does this mean for my business website?
It’s a known fact among premier digital marketing agencies like Keen, that Google and other search engines have been giving preference to responsive websites (a website that adjusts it’s displayed to the device being used) over non-mobile friendly sites. This means that all things being equal if your website is not mobile friendly, your competitor’s websites will rank ahead of you in Google.
Why is it important to have a mobile-friendly website with fast loading speed?
According to statics from Google themselves;
- People are five times more likely to leave a site if it’s not mobile friendly
- More than half of mobile users will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load
Have you ever visited a website where you had to continuously pinch to zoom to read the content? It can actually be quite frustrating for the visitor. As a result, the visitor might hit the back button and visit your competitor’s website.
How do you I find out if my website is mobile friendly or not?
There are various tools out there where you can run a quick test. We recommend Google’s Mobile Friendly Testing Tool. Just drop your website URL into the search box and hit ‘run test’. You will get your results in less than 20 seconds
How do I check my website speed test?
There are at least 15 website speed testing sites that we can recommend here. They all give you very similar results. GTmetrix.com and Google’s mobile speed test are the most popular and the most accurate.
What shall I do to make my website mobile friendly and stop losing customers?
Here’s an action plan list from our web developers that you can implement;
To improve website speed:
- If you have a WordPress website, install a caching plugin
- Compress images
- Minify CSS
- Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
- Host your website with a reliable hosting company
- Set your website for AMP (accelerated mobile pages)
To make your website mobile friendly:
This is very dependent on what CMS you are using. Here are the key action points to making your mobile site user-friendly and easy to use;
- Keep calls to action front and center
- Keep menus short and sweet.
- Use click to call buttons for better conversions
- Make product images expandable
- Design a simple contact form.
- Make it easy for users to go back to the homepage
- Adequate and adaptable font size
- No annoying and obstructive popups
Do not forget to visit the Google Webmaster tools to see if there are any issues with your mobile website
Final thought
Google has been investing heavily in Mobile technology. Don’t be left behind. Contact the team at Keen to learn more about how we can help you increase your website’s visibility online