7 Reasons Small Business must Optimise Websites for Mobile
The fact is if you’re not optimised for mobile you’re going to lose business.
With 74% of Aussies browsing the internet on mobile phones and 65% shopping online, research shows users will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Further, if the site and the shopping cart is not optimised for mobile devices clients will not return.
Considering how important a website can be for any small business it seems only natural to take the extra care to ensure the website is mobile friendly. It’s amazing to me how so many websites are still not optimised for a mobile experience.
Here are seven reasons small businesses must have a mobile optimised website:
- Mobile Users are Different
Mobile users have different objectives than desktop users and typically this means they want information in quick, easily digestible bites.
This highlights the importance of optimising your mobile experience to match a visitor’s needs and behaviours in the context of how they will most likely be browsing your website. By making the path to purchase or enquiry simple and intuitive you’ll align more precisely with mobile users who need information rapidly to make decisions on the fly.
- Mobile Gets Traffic
With the majority of global web searches conducted on a mobile device by over a billion users worldwide, mobile websites are now more important than desktop versions. Smartphone users are engaging with mobile websites and apps while watching TV, commuting to work, and simultaneously while using a computer.
Google states: the future of search is mobile and websites that aren’t usable on handheld devices will see their search rank suffer for it.
- Better Brand Engagement
People like your brand more when you offer a satisfying mobile experience and they’re more likely to return to your website later on a desktop. 90% of people report moving between devices, or “multi-screening”, to accomplish a task. When your mobile experience is optimised for functionality and consistency it fosters trust and affinity with users.
On the other hand if your mobile website is difficult to navigate customers are more likely to go to the competition than to visit you on a desktop computer. If you can’t provide what they need when they need it you will have lost the opportunity for the sale and risk losing a customer permanently to a competitor.
- Increased Conversions
Desktop websites in mobile browsers are ineffective at converting visitors into buyers. Calls to action are often obscured, links are difficult to click and contact pages are buried in awkward menus. Mobile shoppers have little patience for an unwieldy website and one-third of them will leave a transaction if the site isn’t optimised for mobile.
80% of shoppers admit that mobile purchases are impulse-driven and that they’re more likely to purchase from and interact with a brand that offers an engaging mobile experience.
- Reduce Your Bounce Rate
Content that looks great on a desktop might be unreadable on a mobile device. Visitors won’t stay on your site if they have to pinch and zoom or squint at illegible type, or worse yet if it runs flash or anything that requires add-ons to display in a browser. If your website isn’t optimised professionally for mobile your bounce rate on mobile devices is going to be extremely high. By providing mobile visitors with an appropriate and intuitive user experience you will obviously engage visitors longer and drive more of them to purchase or enquire.
- Plugins create App like experience
With the rapid evolution of plugins it is now easy to add features and shortcuts to your website to allow users an App like experience, increasing return visits and client loyalty.
Users can simply select to add your website icon to the homepage of their smartphone and use the website in the same manner they’ve become accustomed to using Apps. Albeit with faster download times and increased functionality than Apps, all of which is SEO friendly.
- Optimised websites are the next wave
At the statistical peak 80% of websites globally were not phone optimised, which drove the introduction of the phone App as a substitute for poorly performing websites and bad user experience. This is not the case anymore and the website has become more important than ever, in the main due to download speeds, functionality, and SEO friendly search.
Properly optimised websites will reclaim this territory from Apps and take back full dominance of the smartphone experience.
Optimising your site is a smart investment in your brand and business, and most likely less expensive than you think. Contact us for an obligation free assessment of your current site.
