It’s more important than ever for your business to have a website, which acts as a virtual shopfront, and a place for potential clients to check out your services or products before conducting business with you.
A recent Ofcom study showed that in 2020/21, the way we access the internet is changing with 85% of internet users using their smartphones to go online.[1] It is thought that by 2025 more than 3.7billion internet users will only be accessing the internet via their smartphones.[2] This means that when you are designing your website it needs to be mobile phone ready.
There are two types of phone ready websites; responsive or adaptive. A responsive website is one where the website expands or shrinks in order to fit the screen. An adaptive design is more likely to have two different websites – one for mobiles and one for laptops and PCs.
Whichever means of creating your mobile ready website you use, it will be a sound business decision.
How will a mobile friendly website benefit my SME?
1. Google – The Google algorithm loves mobile phone ready websites and helps them to rank higher on the search engine. The more phone ready your website is, the more likely you are to rank on the first page.
2. Faster loading – A mobile-friendly website will load faster which with diminishing attention spans is essential. If the page takes longer than three seconds to load, most users will abandon it.
3. User Experience – If your website is mobile phone ready then this means it will load correctly for the user and ensure the time on your website is a pleasurable one. Having to zoom in and out of pages or move the page around to be able to read it will simply frustrate the user who will then go elsewhere.
4. Product Awareness – If your website loads well on mobile phones, it will bring brand and product awareness to more people providing more opportunities for your business.
5. Competitive Edge – Having a mobile friendly website will immediately set yours ahead of other similar businesses which don’t.
How will not having a mobile-friendly website harm my business?
1. Difficult to navigate – With most people waiting only two seconds for a website to load, they aren’t going to remain on your website much longer if it is difficult to navigate, meaning your brand is damaged in the mind of the user.
2. Lost sales – A non-responsive website will not make sales, and in 2020 online sales saw 10 years’ growth in three months.[3] Forcing users to ‘think ’about whether to purchase when they can get to a PC, will inevitably lose those impulse buys or sales altogether.
3. Lost reputation – With an increase in scam sites and dodgy sales pages people are more sceptical online and a non-responsive or badly configured site could ring alarm bells in the head of many users, making them lose trusting your brand.
By ignoring the mobile users when designing or upgrading your business website you are potentially limiting the ability of your company to grow and thrive in a very competitive marketplace. Having an online presence is key but ignoring how the 58.33million users[4]in the UK will consume your content is a major oversight, and one you make at your detriment.
If you are looking to build a new website for your business or want to check whether your website is mobile-friendly – and if not how to adapt it, give the team at SupportWise a call today.
[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/217834/adults-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2020-21.pdf
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/smartphones-72percent-of-people-will-use-only-mobile-for-internet-by-2025.html
[3] https://madebyshape.co.uk/web-design-blog/why-ecommerce-is-the-future-of-retail/
