More than 60% of Google searches are now made on mobile devices. This means that the simple answer to the question “what happens if my website is not mobile friendly?” is you will drastically reduce what your website delivers given how many people will now find you from their mobile.
This was brought into even sharper focus in September 2020.
That’s when Google moved to ‘mobile-first indexing’. In plain English this means that Google changed their sums to rank websites on their mobile content, rather on their desktop content.
This means that if you want to generate your desired amount of online traffic, online enquiries, and online sales, you simply cannot afford to not to have a fully responsive website.
What is a responsive website?
A responsive website is one that will automatically scale its content to the size of the screen it is being viewed on.
A responsive site will improve your visitor experience massively. Those who find your site via their smartphone or tablet won’t have to scroll around or zoom in and out to try and navigate to what they want to find out.
More crucially, they won’t get so frustrated scrolling around and zooming in and out that they leave your site all together to find an easier to use option from the millions available.
The good news is now that the website creation platforms available means you no longer need to create a brand new website, you can easily update your site so that it scales to the screen it’s being viewed on.
Why is a responsive web design essential?
Basically, because so many people now switch between mobiles, tablets, and desktops continually throughout the day and because mobile searches are most definitely leading the way.
However, there are other benefits.
Responsive websites are more cost-effective as there is no longer any need to maintain and host separate sites for desktop browsers and mobile browsers.
They are more flexible in terms of content management. You can upload brand new content to all versions of your website from your own phone.
But most of all, Google prioritises responsive websites. They believe responsive sites are easier for users to share and link to.
They also say it is easier to ‘crawl’ and index responsive sites because Google only needs to crawl a site once rather than multiple times to capture every different all version of your site.
In layman’s terms this means your most up to date content will be indexed more quickly which will improve your organic search rankings.
What happens if my website isn’t mobile-friendly?
The main consequence will be your website doesn’t deliver what it should. This is because:
- Users will find it hard to find what they are looking for
- Their frustration will end up forcing them to leave your site and go to one of your competitors
- Their frustration will damage their view of your brand and make it highly unlikely that they’ll come back to your site
- Your word-of-mouth opportunities will diminish because frustrated users won’t recommend you to their family and friends
- People won’t stay on your site long enough to find, enjoy, and (most importantly) share your content which will hamper your third party traffic opportunities
And while all these points should more than convince you to make sure your website is fully mobile responsive, there is one other factor to consider.
The number of searches being made on a mobile has long been increasing fast, but the pandemic has caused them to rocket. And as we’ve largely been forced to buy from home from some time, the rate at which a search converts to a purchase has not only never been higher, all indications are that this stat is only going to continue to increase.
With all that in mind, how can you afford not to have a mobile friendly website?
If you’d like to discuss how to make your website more mobile (and tablet) friendly, please get in touch.
Or if you’d like us to conduct a quick and easy fixed price audit of all your digital assets (including your website), you can find out more here.