Why You Need To Create A Mobile-Friendly
Website Even As A Local Business
Is your company stuck on building the perfect desktop website? Even as a local business, you must focus on creating a mobile-friendly site. Mobile phones are popular across generations, and more people are using their phones to search for information.
Is your website ready to be seen on a seven-inch screen? If you have not begun to think about mobile traffic, that’s okay! From now on, you need to start considering mobile traffic in your digital strategy.
Mobile Traffic Is Essential, Even As A Local Business
Do something for me right now. Open up a new tab and check out your website’s analytics.
If you use Google Analytics, this is a simple process. Go to:
- Audience
- Mobile
- Overview
This simple report will give you a better idea as to why you should care about mobile traffic.
Mobile phones are not like they used to be. Many devices have nice screens, phone plans have lots of data, and mobile devices are ready to take a user wherever they want to go on the web. If you aren’t making adjustments to your website to fit these website users, your site will get left behind.
View of the mobile overview report.
Let’s Dive Deeper To Look At Mobile Search Traffic
Furthermore, if we look at mobile search traffic, we understand how vital it is to create a mobile-friendly website.
Did you know that a mobile device initiates nearly 60% of online searches? This data was taken from a 2016 Hitwise mobile search report that comprehensively looked at millions of searches over about a month’s timespan.
Hitwise noted that some industries, like banking, only had about 39% of their searches initiated by a mobile device. On the other end of the spectrum though, the food and beverage industry, had 72% of their searches initiated by a mobile device. Most other industries fell somewhere in the middle with between 42-68% of their searches being initiated by a mobile device.
This report is a couple of years old now, but it’s still worth reading and noting how you can use the data in your industry. Check out the Hitwise Hitwise Mobile Search report.
So now that we know the importance of a mobile-friendly website, here is how to capitalize on mobile traffic as a local business:
1. Audit Your Website By Checking Out Google Mobile-Friendly Test
One of the first things you can do to optimize mobile traffic is by checking out Google Mobile-Friendly Test. Google Mobile-Friendly Test is a simple, free to use website for anyone on the web. This website works quickly. You enter your website URL, Google looks over it, and gives you suggestions on how to improve your site’s mobile-friendliness.
If the thought of being mobile-friendly hasn’t truly crossed your mind yet, this is a great place to start. You can’t fix any issues with mobile-friendliness if you don’t know where your website stands. So, figure that out first, and then try to find ways to increase your sites mobile-friendliness.
View of the mobile overview report.
Some other great Google tools that you should check out:
Test My Site | Think With Google: This site tests a bunch of different elements of your mobile website speed which is great if you want to get more information specifically about what you can do to improve mobile page speed.
PageSpeed Insights: This Google tool focuses on speed across devices, giving your practical tips you can take up yourself or share with a web developer to increase site speed.
2. Optimize Your Website Images To Make Sure They Are Sized Appropriately For Site Speed
Everyone loves a beautiful photograph, but images can slow down your site to a snail’s pace if they are too large.
You don’t need the highest quality images on your website. It’s a website. Visual companies like magazines may need to be careful about image quality. For most website owners, though, you can still showcase a fantastic picture while compressing your images and making them more site friendly.
Here are some tips on optimizing website images:
Reduce Image Size
There is no reason to save any image that is 5,000 pixels wide. Lower that number to something that’s more along the lines of 1,000-2,000 pixels wide or long depending on the orientation of the image. You may want to go even smaller depending on where the image will be placed.
Save The Picture For Web
If you are using a program like Adobe Photoshop, you can tell the program to save the image for web instead of print. Saving an image for the internet usually means that it’s saving the file at 72 DPI (dots per inch) instead of a print file which might be closer to 300 DPI.
Compress Images Further
Last, but not least, you can also compress images further using tools like ImageOptim or TinyPNG. These tools take your pictures, compress them down further, and usually knock quite a bit off your images, so they are easier to load.
3. Make Contacting Your Business Easy On Mobile
You want to make contacting your business as easy as possible on mobile. Users shouldn’t need to jump through hoops to send you an email or give you a call. One of the best ways to do this is by creating a click-to-call button. Alternatively, you can make sure that your phone number is easy to press and call.
Often businesses will list their phone numbers without thinking about mobile users. Mobile users may have trouble highlighting your number to call it. You want to make sure that mobile users don’t have to go through this frustrating step. You also want to do something similar for your business address. You don’t want mobile users to have to copy/paste your address. Instead, you want them to be able to easily take that address and open it using a tool like Google Maps.
You can embed a Google Maps link on your website relatively quickly just by finding your business on Google Maps and pressing the share button. When you press share, you will open a window for you to either send a link or get an embedded map for your website.
4. Create A Homepage That Gives The Best Information About Your Business
Chances are, your homepage is one of the most visited pages on your small business website. How do you optimize that page, though?
Well, you want to use that page to provide the most relevant information for your audience. Share content like what you do, who you help, and how to get in contact with your business/visit your storefront.
You also want to make sure that your menu is easy to navigate from your homepage. Your site visitors should be able to easily find out more information about your business if they want it.
5. Use Standard Fonts And Decent Font Sizes
Last, but not least, you need to use standard fonts on your website along with decent font sizes. If you want your site to be mobile friendly, you shouldn’t use a font like Wingdings or a 9 pt. font!
Instead, you want to pick a standard font that every computer or mobile device can recognize and read. Check out your site on mobile right now, do you need to zoom in a ton to read your font? If so, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and figure out your font.
Conclusion: You Have To Build A Mobile-Friendly Website
Creating a mobile-friendly website will help any business thrive. If you haven’t focused on this element of your business yet, hopefully, this article will give you the push in the right direction. It’s hard for any site to be 100% mobile-friendly. Instead, you should focus on the small tweaks you can do to make your website work for more of your customers.