It may sound surprising, but I still encounter business owners and management teams that remain resistant to having a mobile-friendly website, because they don’t see the value in it. The advice I give these companies is that if they would like to continue being relevant in 2015, then now is the time to begin building a mobile-friendly (Responsive) website.

Below are my top 3 reasons why companies must have a mobile-friendly website in 2015:

Reason 1: Increased Visits From Mobile Users

Google now flags and assigns a label to websites that have been built for a mobile layout as “mobile-friendly”, within its mobile search results. If you ignored mobiles and tablets when building your website or haven’t yet initiated an upgrade project to make your website mobile responsive,  then you are certain to experience a negative impact on your website’s click-through rate (CTR) from users when they perform a Google search. It’s a fairly simple scenario, if a user performs a search on their mobile device (Google has already predicted that Mobile Search will overtake Desktop Search in the coming years), and four of the top five results have a “mobile-friendly” label, the mobile user will of course give preference to the four results that Google has stated as being mobile-friendly. The end result here being that websites that haven’t yet become responsive (Mobile Friendly) will receive less and less click-throughs, and those websites that are mobile friendly will see the benefit of more click-throughs.

Reason 2: Better Mobile Rankings in Google

Were you aware that Google has started penalizing websites in mobile searches that are not mobile-friendly? Google ensures that websites which have been built to be mobile-friendly rank higher than those that haven’t been made responsive, therefore providing their mobile searchers with a better user-experience. As described in Reason 1 above though, Google started taking this a step further by using the “mobile-friendly” flag as a ranking factor to promote sites that have been optimised for mobiles, whilst penalizing and demoting those websites that are not mobile friendly. Google has stated specially that they have already begun looking to make use of this approach as part of their ranking signal.

It’s become unavoidable, if your website is not mobile friendly, then you are about to hurt as far as search engines are concerned.

Reason 3: Sales From Mobile Users

If the possibility of better Google ranks, and increased click-throughs to your website isn’t enough incentive to make sure you have a mobile friendly website, then hopefully lost sales is. Failing to have a mobile-friendly website at a time when so many searchers use mobile devices to find products and services they need is essentially handing customers over to your competition. Consider some of these key statistics below:

  • On average, Australians spend $2,616 per year, per person online
  • The vast majority of websites are found through search engines
  • On average, 93% of Australian Internet searches are made via Google. That’s around 6 million Google searches per day
  • 63.9% of Australian Internet users use search engines as the first step in making a buying decision
  • The top 3 listings on Google account for 60% of click through rates
  • Smartphone penetration has reached approximately 85% of Australian population
  • 61% of mobile searches are product information based
  • 86% of Smartphone searches are for local businesses
  • Of that 86%, 88% have contacted a business, with 39% making a purchase
  • In Australia, only 1 in 5 websites are currently mobile optimised

The bottom line is that failing to have a mobile-friendly website is most likely already resulting in lost sales for your business. Gone are the days where consumers were forced to endure poor user experiences on their mobile devices. Many businesses are acknowledging the very real fact that they must have a mobile strategy for their website and digital presence, meaning those companies that don’t have this simply slide to the bottom of the pile, and lose sales as a result.

Conclusion

Make sure your business has a mapped out SEO strategy in 2015, including a mobile-friendly website, to benefit from increased click-throughs, higher Google rankings, and most importantly, increased sales.

Is your website mobile friendly? A quick, simple test will tell you if it is. And the cost doesn’t have to be huge to fix it, to make the site responsive/mobile friendly. Get in touch with Newpath WEB today to discuss your website and a mobile friendly solution.

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