3 Reasons Why Your Mobile Website Must Be Flawless

In  Development

With the number of mobile searches rising through the years, businesses of all sizes should turn their focus to mobile solutions. Nowadays, mobile usage has exceeded desktop traffic, as 51.3% of all internet usage is mobile. A website that offers flawless customer experience, high scores on mobile speed, and has an intuitive design with quality content, will keep the target audience and site visitors coming back for more. Therefore, if you have a mobile-optimized website, you will have better results for lead generation, you will build a valid and trusted brand, create customer loyalty and engagement. Keeping this in mind, we strongly recommend to start with a mobile-friendly website or go directly for a responsive website

In this article we are going to dive deeper into why any business owner must make a change, focusing on mobile-friendliness now and going forward.  

Why Do You Need a Mobile Website?

Now let’s explore the reasons why you need a mobile version of your website, based on statistics, facts, and the on-going evolution of the digital world. First and foremost, 53% of online users will leave a mobile website if the pages do not load in 3 seconds or less. This means that you will lose lots of traffic and potential customers if you do not meet their expectations. Second, Google has made mobile-friendliness a ranking factor. Mobile-first indexing should be a priority if you want to beat competitors and be more visible than them. If the Google bot will find your website hostile to mobile users or finds it slow loading, you are going to be penalized and will lose search engine ranking. 

In today’s scenario, online traffic has shifted from desktop to mobile. People spend more than 5 hours on their smartphones daily and more than half mobile visitors have discovered a new company, a product or service while navigating on their smartphones and tablets. Besides, Google says that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site if they had trouble accessing it and 40% of them will turn to a competitor’s site instead. 

In case you do not know if your website is mobile-friendly, you can use the Mobile-Friendly Test tool from Google to get a full analysis of your mobile web pages and receive recommendations on how to improve them.

Shortly put, mobile is critical to your business no matter the industry. You can be blogging about lifestyle and well-being, work on the website for your student community, or selling products or services to potential clients. The most important thing is to make sure that you offer a flawless user experience on mobile devices. 

What Is The Difference Between A Mobile-Friendly Website and a Responsive Website?

When it comes to the mobile experience, we have to think about offering the best possible user experience, as our goals are to keep customers engaged, to generate leads, sales, and create a brand that everyone will recognize and appreciate. But now you might wonder “What is the best approach to achieve my business goals?”

What we consider to be important for you to know, is the difference between a mobile-friendly website and a mobile responsive website. Thus, let’s get into the subject. 

A mobile-friendly website is coded to properly fit smaller displays. The code is designed to shrink the actual version of websites, into fitting smartphones and tablets screen size. Responsive websites will restructure the content to be displayed across all mobile devices in an aesthetically, easy-to-read format. The difference between these two ways is that the first one will offer a poorer user experience than the second one.

When it comes to mobile responsiveness, there are three ways to implement it. Through responsive web design that sends the same HTML code to all devices, from the same URL address. The content will adapt to the user’s screen width size thanks to CSS code alterations to render the mobile pages, based on the target device. The second way is dynamic serving which uses different HTML and CSS codes through the same URL. This technique recognizes the user’s device and redirects it at a server level. The third option is a dedicated mobile website or separate URLs which implies the creation of a separate domain, dedicated solely to mobile traffic. 

We wrote an article about the differences between responsive design vs dynamic serving vs dedicated mobile website, the pros and cons of each method, and examples from our portfolio for each implementation.  

The conclusion is that all responsive websites are mobile-friendly, but not all mobile-friendly websites are responsive. 

3 Reasons Why Your Mobile Website Must Be Flawless

Today, people need to have all the technology at their fingertips and they want to access the internet on the go, not depending on a stationary device. There are plenty of reasons why your mobile website should be flawless, but we will split them into 3 main categories to offer you as much information as possible.

Improve SEO

An optimized mobile website for accessibility will offer your customers a flawless user experience. Besides that, it also helps you with search engine algorithms as Google is penalizing companies that do not have a fast, secure, and responsive site. Search engines work this way: they want to help company owners reach the first page in the search results by prioritizing mobile content, content based on user intent, and high-quality websites. They want to offer online users the possibility of finding the most relevant result based on their search. Since the most online activity comes from mobile devices, this feature is mandatory for you, if you want to be there for your users and search engines.  

Another important factor of a mobile-friendly site is that it is going to be labelled as “mobile-friendly” in search. Users will see right from the SERP (search engine results page) that your website can handle a smartphone or a tablet. The websites adapted for mobile search are boosted in the results page, while the ones that are not optimized are pushed down. This means that your visibility and website traffic will decrease if you don’t implement this feature. 

As we’ve mentioned before, you can lose up to 53% of traffic if your site doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less. Customers expect a better experience on a mobile device than on the desktop. The speed and functionality of a mobile website are crucial for SEO. If your design is poor on smartphones and tablets, it will definitely hit hard your rank in search engines. 

Create Brand Visibility and Brand Loyalty 

Think of your website as your business card. The more professional-looking, the more people will associate it with quality and value. Your brand image will attract more customers.  We recommend you to keep your brand consistent on looks, message, voice and tone of your content because these are the reasons that will build your customer’s trust in your business. By doing this, you will create brand loyalty and people will turn into returning customers. Having a mobile website that is sleek, user-friendly, clean, and offers a flawless mobile experience, you will create a positive experience and will expand your brand visibility. 

Attract more customers and increase brand visibility by providing your users with the relevant information they are looking for. Pay attention to your local SEO as search engines are pushing up on the results page the businesses that are in the user’s proximity. Optimize your Google My Business profile, social media accounts, and consider writing articles for SEO purposes

What we strongly recommend is to create and maintain a strong brand reputation because it will benefit you both online and offline. Building your reputation is important at the beginning to attract customers, but maintaining one is a must because people like to share their experience with a certain brand or company and they influence others on purchasing from you or go to your competitors. This online reputation is responsible for creating brand loyalty. By having a nice, smooth, and professional mobile website your customers will have the feeling that your business is modern and relevant. A fast mobile website adds to your convenience, as people are looking to easily connect with companies and quickly get what they are looking for. 

We take mobile solutions very seriously, as we understand the importance of a fast and flawless mobile website. No matter your business size or business industry, we can help you with creating the best custom mobile development, adjusted only on your needs. See our portfolio and let’s chat about your business needs.   

Increase Return of Investment

A responsive mobile website design is cost-effective because it adapts to any device and ensures a consistent web structure and user experience. This will improve SEO and will make a difference in your marketing budget.  Based on the fact that almost 60% of online searches are coming from smartphones, Google does not like websites that offer a poor experience on mobile, therefore will push those sites down in the search results. We recommend you to pay special attention to social media advertising because social media is a time-filler that you can benefit from. People are using social media when they are commuting, waiting in line, taking a break from work, when they are having lunch, etc. Therefore, being present at the right time on the right social networks, people will visit your website and will purchase if they are pleased with their experience on your website. 

Beating the local competition will increase your ROI (return of investment) and will ensure healthy business growth. Having a mobile-optimized website will give you the upper hand and you will have an edge over your competitors. To do this, focus on your digital marketing efforts because digital interaction plays an important role in the success of your business. By not having a mobile website, you are basically handing over the sales to your competitors. 

Moreover, a good mobile experience will amp up the sales and will increase the average time on site. If your website is taking too long to load, users will leave your site in no time. There’s a 61% chance visitors will leave. On the other hand, when your website loads quickly, it increases the time customers spend on your site, it is easy for them to navigate through pages, and in the end, will lead to conversions. Offering a positive experience, users are 67% more likely to convert

Our Expertise 

Whether you have or you plan to make your website mobile-friendly, it is important to consider your target demographic and make it attractive to them. With more people using the internet on mobile devices than desktops, having a mobile solution implemented for your site, means to be able to engage with your target audience and reach more people. 

A mobile-friendly website includes everything from the server speed, web design, features, to content, and image optimization, and us here at Flowmatters, can take care of all of it with maximum professionalism and passion. We love custom development challenges and we always do all of our homework before starting any project. We do our research regarding your business industry, we do a competitor’s analysis, we talk to our partners and share our findings, and also listen to their needs and goals. After all the research, the magic is about to happen. Our portfolio is diverse and our partners had different business needs and goals. Because we have experience in so many business fields, we are the right choice for your business. From travel destination websites, online recruitment platforms, to fashion eCommerce and real estate, our solutions are always mobile-optimized in functionality, content, and SEO. Our attention to details makes the difference between a good and a great project. Contact us and let’s take your business to new levels, reach a new audience, build a relevant brand, and increase your revenue.   

Frequently Asked Questions    

How do I check the speed of my website?

We recommend you to use online tools such as PageSpeed Insights and Web Page Test to get a full report regarding your website performance. 

How to prepare my mobile website for the future?

We believe that Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are the future of mobile content. These pages have a specific framework that provides a very fast and smooth user experience overall. 

How to stay ahead of my competition? 

We strongly stand by research. First and foremost, you need to know where your competition stands both on technology and user experience. We suggest starting with thorough research on your competitor’s websites to see what technology, features, and implementations they use, take a look at their website design, architecture, and pages, analyze the content, see what keywords they rank for, and what the users say about them. Make a list of what you like, what you already have, what you lack, and identify opportunities to be better than them.