You may have noticed that the world’s gone mobile-device crazy. I’m no exception. When I started blogging about websites, my smalllest device was my laptop. My blackberry wasn’t taking me to websites, my laptop was. What I saw back then, ten years or so ago on my laptop screen, was basically what I’m seeing now on my iPhone screen. That websites are frustrating me by sizing the sites for the wrong devices, and not making them responsive enough to the varied ways that people access the net. Everything was sized for a PC back then. Well, almost everything. Even if your home page at that time was able to display well across all devices, usually somewhere in the site was something that busted the screen and made scrolling around necessary to accomplish what the user wants to do.
And for whatever unfathomable reason, a decade has passed and we’re still doing the same thing! Business owners who want my business are STILL not making their websites responsive enough for me to accomplish the goal I came to their site for. Again, your website needs to work, and work well, all the way through the conversion process, on the tiny screens that now access the web in greater numbers than even PCs or laptops.
Users hate scrolling. Users hate squinting at text that’s too small. Users hate when the submit button is off-screen. Users hate when they’re 80% of the way through the process of signing on and your website becomes unusable because you wanted a fancy glossy process that simply won’t work on the simpler interface of a mobile phone.
I can hear you congratulating yourself on having beaten the curve. But, are you sure? Have you really checked? Since late 2013, when mobile devices overtook traditional computers as the primary access point to the internet, business owners have still been slow to update, slow to change over to the new way to do things – and a ton of the shucksters that litter my profession have told business owners that some insta-plug-in would completely solve the process of becoming mobile friendly, with a single quick-fix solution… and then leave huge gaps in their work, or only update the home page. Again, nearly no one offering mobile friendliness updates actually does the job fully and completely, to both Google and (more importantly) your end user’s satisfaction.
Think about why you need to do this. If you’re not reading this right now from your phone, you’re in the minority. But, go ahead and take a look at this page, this blog post you’re reading right now on a mobile device. Take a look at any of my websites on a mobile device. They scale beautifully. No matter what you read them on, they respond as they are supposed to. The menu scales down, the text is still readable. All my forms work and look good from any devices from the largest PC screen to the smallest smart phone. And that’s why I’m still getting plenty of visitors to my sites, and plenty of interest for my services.
Now go find your own website on your phone. The one your business relies on to get things done. Try to make it all the way through the conversion process. Is all the text scaling properly? Are the images appearing as they should? Are you able to use the web forms without headaches?
If not, contact me. You need to update, because you’re probably losing real customers in numbers greater than the cost of updating, simply by not being mobile friendly.
A lot of people are talking about how Google penalized people for not switching to mobile friendly. Yeah, sure. I completely agree with their actions, considering that unfriendly websites are frustrating to the end user, and Google should always keep the end user of their search engine in mind at all times.
So, keep your own end user in mind, and make your website so that it doesn’t slow them down as they try to convert. Get scalable, get mobile friendly, get responsive. Whatever you CALL it, it’s about your end users, and turning your visitors into customers.
If you want to do that, you need to get your website up to present standards – and in a hurry. MWM’s mobile friendliness updates start at $500, and head up from there based on the website. These are full rebuilds, not temporary patches, and they’re remarkably more future-proof than you’ll get from any patch or plugin. Contact us if you’re interested.
For just a little extra, you can get Facebook and social friendly as well. Ask about that if you’ve been frustrated with ugly links in social media.