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95% of households in the UK have at least one smartphone. With the convenience and ease of browsing on a mobile device, it’s no surprise that well over half of all site visits come from a mobile. While some websites look great on a desktop or laptop, browsing on mobile requires completely different features. The screen is small, so texts need to be easy to read. Buttons, links, and menus need to be big enough to click on a small scale.
Many businesses forget about the importance of making their site mobile-friendly and therefore make it harder for over half their viewers to interact with their website. There are many reasons your website must be mobile-friendly.
Everyone is on mobile
The majority of your viewers will be looking at your website on mobile, with that number only projected to increase. It essential that your site is accessible for your users to navigate around to find the information or products that they want. If the design isn’t compatible, they will quickly give up and move to a site that offers a better experience. Your best bet is to make the small investment in pay monthly websites which will optimise the design for you for the best results.
Stay Competitive
If your competitors have mobile-friendly sites and you don’t, then you will put yourself at risk of losing your customers to them. You can almost bet that others in your niche have already made the switch to a design that works best with mobile. You need to make it a priority to stay current as even if you offer a better product, and your competitors’ functional site will still draw more customers.
SEO
Search engine optimisation is critical to ensure that your website is visible to those who are searching for your products and services. One of the factors that Google considers when ranking your website is responsiveness. It will crawl your site to see how quickly your pages load, and how compatible the overall design is with mobile devices.
Reach
You want your website to get in front of as many people as possible. With users spending so much time on their mobiles and social media apps, the best way to increase your reach is through shares. Making your website easy to share on social media will encourage users to do so. The more people that share your site, content, or products, the more new users they will direct to you. Make it easy for them by integrating social share buttons directly into your mobile design.
Engagement
In a world of instant gratification, the average attention span of a viewer keeps getting lower and lower. If your website doesn’t load fast, then the visitor will drop off almost instantly. Bounce rates are incredibly high on sites that are not mobile-friendly, meaning people will leave your website just as quickly as they got to it. You may have an incredible product and valuable content, but no one will take the time to engage with it if you don’t make it easy for them. By making your website responsive, you will increase user engagement and encourage them to continue browsing.