The Internet has taken over most of the aspects of our lives if not all. Businesses all over have capitalized on this opportunity. Almost all businesses irrespective of the industry and sector own a website.
Owning a business website is crucial for businesses in the post-pandemic world where customers prefer to shop and avail services on the go. However, having a business website is not sufficient on its own to give results. Businesses need to optimize their websites to make them more mobile-friendly.
Mobile-friendly websites are designed to be easily accessible on mobile devices like smartphones. The website should be similar in appearance as well as give the user the same experience on all devices be it desktop or mobile devices.
We’ll give you the reasons why your business needs a mobile-friendly website.
Table of Contents
Capture the huge market
Mobile or smartphones have become necessities today. The easy accessibility and connectivity offered by these devices offer many advantages to us. The smartphone market is also one of the most rapidly growing markets. Take India’s smartphone market for an example, Counterpoint Research estimates that in 2021 it will hit the highest yet 173 million units, growing by 14% year on year basis.
Globally the world’s 40% of the population is estimated to own a smartphone by 2021. Add to it that 68.1% of all website visits globally in 2020 came from mobile devices, as against 28.9% from desktop visits, as per the study conducted by Perficient.
For businesses, this means that to increase the reach it is imperative to make their websites mobile-friendly. Hence, widening their audience can result in driving more traffic and increasing revenue.
Reach out to a wider audience
Mobile devices as stated earlier has a big market. Additionally, mobiles are also used by people of all ages irrespective of the income slab, region, or country. The reason for the growth of the mobile market can be accredited to the affordability of smartphones. Smartphones are a lot more affordable than desktop devices like laptops or computers. This means that the middle class and lower middle class have easy access to mobiles over laptops.
This further validates the need for a mobile-friendly website for businesses. Having a mobile-friendly website will help to target this set of audiences. Thereby increasing the reach, traffic, and sales.
Rank your site higher
SEO is a key aspect of digital marketing strategy. Having a business website that is functional is not enough if the website is not ranking high on the search results. It is the ranking on the search engine results page that helps to drive traffic to the website. The higher a website ranks, the higher the traffic and reach. And to rank on the search engine every website needs to optimize as per SEO.
An SEO strategy has various factors affecting it and all of them help the site to rank better. One of the factors is how mobile-friendly the website is. The search engines algorithm, especially the Google algorithm, rewards websites that are designed to be mobile-friendly. This ultimately helps the site to rank higher on the search result page and increase traffic.
Every business website needs to rank high to be able to take the organic traffic to their site. This is also important to not lose the traffic to rival websites.
Mobiles are accessible
Mobile can be used on the go. Unlike larger devices like laptops and computers, mobiles are small and can be used even while traveling. Smartphones can be used fairly easily. Students who are busy with studies and part-time jobs as well as professionals and workers, use smartphones while they commute and in between their work.
The easy use of smartphones represents a market traveling in somebody’s pocket. To not miss out on this opportunity businesses need to capitalize on it by making their website mobile-friendly. So that the site loads within seconds when a user clicks on the link.
Increases shareability
A mobile-friendly website is more shareable on social media. This is because these sites are often faster to load on all the devices. Since almost everyone uses phones more frequently than computers, mobile to mobile sharing becomes easy. Desktop to mobile sharing or opposite become less convenient when compared to mobile to mobile.
It helps to spread the information faster; this makes contacting the websites easier. The prospective shareholders including suppliers and customers can easily contact your website.
Capitalize on human behavior
People use smartphones for various purposes, one of them being to kill time. We often reach for our phones out of boredom, and our pursuit to reduce that boredom leads us to scroll on social media and a lot of times to shopping sites.
So if you have a mobile-friendly website chances are that users might stumble across your website and who knows make a purchase. To maximize this having mobile-friendly content and a website will help rank the site higher on the search results and make your business visible to various users.
Most users use phones to research before buying
Since phones are widely accessible, affordable, people also use them to look up different websites and do their research before buying. Users also look up and hit the search query on phones more often than on desktops.
Users tend to look at different options and websites before finalizing their purchases. They do this on their phones, and if you have a mobile-friendly website that loads quickly and has a smooth user experience you will gain a lot of new audiences.
Customer loyalty
A website that works on desktop and mobile devices offers a positive user experience that builds trust in the business. Imagine visiting an eCommerce website on your laptop, the website works smoothly and leaves a positive impression on you. The next day you decide to visit the same website on your smartphone while you commute to your office. But the website takes a long time to load and navigating on the website is not very pleasant. Such experience leads customers to change their positive impression of the business to a not-so-good one. This is true even for a user who has already made a purchase with the website.
The credibility of the business website, which it spends a lot of time building, plummets easily.
To avoid the above scenario businesses should aim to develop a website that is accessible on all devices. Which will help businesses to enhance goodwill and restore trust.
eCommerce is blooming
Because of the lockdown imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic shops, malls, offices, theatres were all made to shut down. The pandemic induced consumers to shift to online shopping. Every eCommerce business that capitalized on this situation and launched websites was highly rewarded.
According to Statista, over two million people bought goods and services online in 2020. The same source also reported that 75% of people shop online at least once a month. More importantly, Statista also reported that almost half (49.2) of eCommerce sales are made through mobile devices.
This means that every business irrespective of the sector or target audience should own a website that offers an even user experience across all devices.
Be on top of the mind of consumers
The digital presence of businesses is significant primarily because it takes the business to a wider audience. An eCommerce website is not restricted to a physical region like any physical shop or store is. This is the biggest advantage of the internet for businesses.
And mobile devices have taken these business websites to remote areas and villages where there might be fewer than 5 physical shops. A mobile-friendly website helps businesses to effectively communicate with their audience. Effective communication and paid advertisements make sure that customers are always engaged with your brand. This helps to keep your brand on top of their mind while searching on the internet.
What makes a mobile-friendly website different from an ordinary website?
We have given sufficient reasons to convince you to make your website mobile-friendly. But how is mobile-friendly different from an ordinary one? The following list will make it clear –
- A mobile-friendly website should not appear as it would on a desktop, it should have a responsive page display.
- Mobile friendly fonts and templates should be used to make the text readable
- Any media, i.e. any image, video or graphics used on the website should be optimised to make it easier to load without compromising on the media quality.
- To make the site look uniform and well structured, the formatting of text is crucial. It is important to note that since mobile has a smaller screen to fit the content in it needs to be designed specifically.
- Making the website easy to navigate for users by reducing data entry, making buttons responsive for touches and swipes.
- Voice search can also be optimised to make the overall experience easy.
- Most importantly the website needs to be optimistic to make it faster and easy to load. A website on desktop and one on mobile have different speeds, and both need to be optimised for better results.
Going digital has become a necessity for businesses and owning a website is key for increasing revenue. Ensuring that the website is optimized for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets will help businesses to increase their reach and drive more traffic.
So design your website from a web design company that makes your website compatible for all browsers, desktops, mobile, and likewise. As the smartphone market is likely to grow many folds at a rapid pace in the coming few years.
The number of people using smartphones is also expected to grow and cover more than half of the world population in a short span of time. With more people using smartphones the businesses will have a wider market to target. A mobile-friendly website is also likely to rank higher than those that are not. All these make having a mobile-friendly website a sure bet towards increased revenues.