Small Business: Is your Website Mobile Friendly?

Sites visited by mobile devices

Your website looks fantastic when you view it on your computer using your favorite browser, but what do your customers, clients see? 

Visiting websites with smartphones and tablets continues to steadily increase.

Are you reading this post on a mobile device? 

​Larger smartphones, and increasing use of tablets may be the reason? Just looking at these statistics would indicate that half of your customers are using mobile devices to look at your web pages. We monitor the types of devices that visit our clients sites and have found that statistics for mobile devices are much higher, averaging 88.7%!!! (Because of this stat, all pages we create are done in a responsive website design to display properly on the device being used)

So, the lesson here is to make sure that your website displays properly on any mobile device. Take a look at it using your smartphone and using a couple of mobile browsers like chrome, safari, and Fire Fox - the most commonly used web browsers. If it does not look right, then fix it!!!!

Consider the following as you set-up your web pages: 

• Make sure you telephone number is on each web page as text, not a graphic such as in a logo. Having a text phone number allows smartphone users the ability to click your phone number and then call you right away. 
• Don't create a separate mobile website rather create a responsive website, one that will identify the type of device and browser being used and will adapt to display appropriately. 
• Use high resolution images that will display in a crisp and clean manner no matter the device being used. Again the device and browser will adapt if you are using a responsive website.
• Don't use Flash - You may have noticed that Flash is quickly disappearing from websites as it does not work well with SEO and it takes a lot of time to load on computers and mobile devices. More often than not, the person browsing will leave the page before it loads. 
• Use word wrap in programming your web pages. This allows the text to the flow on the device being used. Use word-wrap in the style settings for sections of your pages that has a lot of text. 

Now for fun, visit your competitors websites using your mobile device and see how they look and perform. You may find they don't perform well and this could give you the edge! How many times have you visited a website on your mobile device where it takes too much time to load, or the text is garbled, images hard to see? Chances are you wait a few seconds then go on to the next page. 

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