Why Do You Need Mobile Friendly Design Too?
No longer is it just good enough to have an optimally designed website. These days ensuring mobile friendly access is integral to cutting it with customers, site visitors, and search engines alike. In this piece, we discuss why this is important and define what makes a mobile friendly design.
What’s The Fuss To Deliver A Mobile Experience?
It turns out that the search engines are great guides about how to reach customers. Did you know that statistically speaking, more than 60 percent of searches are conducted on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets?
Consider the breadth of such devices from the ebook readers to all the styles of tablets and phones on the market. Do you have to design for the paramaters of every device out there? Is that too overwhelming to consider?
Are you sure it is worth it? Absolutely, because of all the purchasing decisions that are made, 60 percent are made by people researching the information on their mobile devices. Let’s follow this path to purchase throughout this article to make the point on mobile design clear.
Say that Samantha is a busy mom who is price-conscious, and very efficient. She goes to her smartphone every time she has to search Google. This morning her son overflowed the washing machine, which flooded the bottom to floors of the house.
It’s your lucky day because your water damage cleanup and repair company in the area. Pat yourself on the back for investing in web design and search engine optimization, including keyword research, social media efforts, and adding YouTube videos.
If you opted out from the designers insistence that you need a mobile site, is that bad? A.) Samantha’s computer is on the dryer for some reason, and the flood of water prevents her from reaching it. B.) It is easier for her to do a voice search on her phone, and then push on the phone number to call a company. C.) Even if you do have a mobile site, is it fast enough?
Fortunately Social Media Outreach Is There
It turns out that Samantha posted her dilemma with a video of her flood on her Instagram. Her friends chimed in on great water damage companies. It turns out that one of them was your company. Only, her friend did not have your phone number or email.
What Is Mobile-Friendly Access?
Rather than leaving a buying customer up to chance, or the fates of rushing waters, use mobile friendly efforts to drive customers to you more reliably.
Do You Need A Separate Mobile Site?
Becuase of the way web design developed around the cellphones, different methods for mobile access developed. It used to be that some would make a page on their regular site that accommodated cellphone use. It was not a good situation. It was awkward at best, and painful for users at worst.
Mobile sites evolved from there, which allegedly could accommodate all of those different sized screens and devices just fine. Do not worry about that yet. The screen size is partly relevant to why accommodations for mobile sites are important.
It turns out that effective web design takes all of the devices into account when building the main website now through a practice called Responsive Web Design.
How the technology is used comes down to the capabilities and strong points of a mobile device when compared to that of a computer. For one, text on a computer will appear missized, too voluminous and the like if it were opened up on a phone.
It is just too much to read on a phone too. A company needs to keep this in mind when marketing to mobile consumers, more than anything else. Text sizing needs to show up in an appropriate size for a mobile device and the browsers that work with a phone or a tablet. Design focus on brevity that concisely but effectively delivers the pertinent information.
The other demands that are put onto businesses marketing to the mobile device customer is that they have to load quickly too. Say that your company designed a mobile site but it is slow to open.
Fortunately, Samantha sees that your company’s phone number is listed in the results along with a map demonstrating how close your office is to her home. She calls you instead of giving your mobile site some traffic.
Coupons, QR Codes, And Tracking
Another benefit of having a well-designed marketing plan is in supporting optimization on mobile devices. Being on social media is great, but most customers again are visiting from their phones.
Capture for text subscriptions and email newsletters is great, but which sounds more relevant for the avid smartphone user? Text, of course. Reach your customers where and how they use the Internet.
QR codes let you track how traffic made it to your site. Where did they find your business? What advertising is working? This is all a part of making a mobile website that will work for your business.
Responsive Web Design
Are you still curious how all those different screens can be so effectively served through a mobile design? In something called responsive web design this issue is addressed. Through the main web development with CSS3 and HTML 5+, information on a website will adapt to fit different screens.
If you are thinking there was a time when mobile websites were in use, you are right. They still are extremely slow to load, often redirect, and poorly adapt to all the different mobile screen sizes they are ineffective. While you are not mistaken, you would be making a big error if you chose to employ a mobile site builder. Use the CSS3 HTML5+ with a max-width rule at 100% and alter how media rules are applied to make the site work for different devices. Adjust the positioning of elements to suit all devices.
The key to building effective mobile friendly and traditional sites is in including all the details that will help your sites perform optimally for today’s customer needs while meeting search engine expectations for performance right from the beginning.