Mobile-friendly websites appeal to customers

Is your website mobile-friendly? 

According to one statistic, of the world's 4 billion mobile phones in use, 1.08 billion are smartphones. What this means is that more people are searching for your business on a mobile device instead of a conventional PC or laptop.

Now more than ever, it is important to make sure your website is readable on a smartphone or other mobile device.  Load time, readability, and images often show up differently on a smaller screen.  If your website is less functional when viewed on a mobile device versus a regular PC or laptop, many mobile users will simply leave your site and you will lose a potential customer.  Google notes that 60% of users expect a site to load on their smartphones or tablets in three seconds or less.

According to Google, going mobile matters for several reasons:

• 85% of mobile devices will be web enabled by next year
• Mobile search has grown 4x in the past year
• 1 in 3 mobile searches have local intent
• 30% of restaurant searches are from mobile devices

Today's tech-savvy consumers have come to expect the same conventional desktop experience with their mobile devices. Having a website that is mobile-friendly will put your company ahead of the competition with today's on-the-go crowd.

Is your company's website optimized for mobile? Is the load time on your smartphone or other mobile device fast enough? Is your website easy to navigate on a mobile device?

Given the average size of a smartphone or tablet – 3 to 8 inches – if you browse a non-optimized site, imagine what that website will look like on your mobile device. While you could zoom in, the other portion of the website would be missing from the screen. Most people would simply leave the site having had a bad user experience.

You know how important it is to optimize your site for Google and possibly Bing and Yahoo. A September 2012 Google survey shares some very interesting results regarding consumers and their smartphones.

What Users Want from Mobile Sites:

• 78% - want a search bar that is easy to find and use
• 73% - want easy to save information for later use
• 66% - want a "click to call" the business
• 64% - want to be able to easily scroll through the website in one direction (up-down or left- right)

How do you make your website mobile-friendly?

I always recommend the K.I.S. approach - Keep It Simple. While it is not difficult to make your website mobile-friendly, there are a few tips to remember in order to garner the most traffic and, ultimately, customers:

• Easy navigation - Having an easy to navigate mobile site will result in a good user-experience and will encourage customers to come back to your site. Make sure it is easy for the user to locate popular items and products with a simple touch on their screen.

• Limit the photos  - Using images to enhance your mobile site is a great idea for the eye of the consumer; just remember that having too many images will slow down the load time of your site.

• Clean it up - Keeping your site as simple as possible is the way to go for mobile devices. Also, keep in mind that your mobile site should complement your desktop website.

Creating a mobile-friendly website  will make a huge difference for smartphone and mobile device users on-the-go. Your mobile-friendly website will load a lot faster than an actual site and will be easier to view. If you don't already have a mobile-optimized site, now is the time to get one. Optimizing your website for mobile devices will help you gain the most web traffic via stationary and on-the-go customers.