Spoiler alert: It's not just because the balance has shifted recently to more people accessing websites from a mobile than from a desktop.
Mobile users search for information, they don't just browse around.
When a mobile visitor searches for you or something you do in Google, they are searching because they often just want your phone number or your address or opening hours. Most of them take immediate action. They call, they visit, they check that you do the thing they are looking to do or you have the thing they want in stock. In other words, they want answers, quickly and without too much fuss.
- If your website is designed for a desktop it might be difficult to read on a mobile device.
- If your website contains large images or lots of Flash content to delivery lovely menus or videos on the desktop, these can often render the mobile users experience frustrating or even impossible.
- If your links are too small to click with big fat fingers on a tiny screen or the content only shows if you hover over an image, you are just going to drive people mad.
And, if you frustrate or upset people, they will move on.
Your competitors have mobile friendly websites.
Just imagine for a second that they move on to a competitor’s website that is mobile friendly and delivers them the information they want easily. Who is likely to get this customers call or business?
Everyone has emails on their phones these days
If you've sent a potential customer and email about your latest offer, product or service and there is a link to your website then you want them to follow that link and see your message. If they read you email on their phone and click through, imagine the frustration they would feel if the content is difficult. How quickly would you lose that person attention?
What about Apps?
Apps are awesome if you have a need to delivery something that only an App can do but remember that a Mobile Friendly website can reach everyone, an App can only reach the people on the platform it's written for and then only after it has been downloaded, installed and run. If somebody just wants your phone number or address, they aren't likely to go to an App store, see if you have an App, install it and then run it to see if tells them something they want to see, especially if it’s as simple as where to find you or when you’re open..
Also, you'll need an App for Apple, Android, Windows and possibly even Blackberry to cover as many customers as a mobile friendly website. Multi-platform App development isn’t cheap.
What should I do?
I'm no website expert or programmer, I'll leave that to others, I just thought I'd talk about our logic for trying to make our own website a little friendlier to the mobile user.
We’ve tried to ensure the text and the pictures try and resize themselves for the different screen sizes across different platforms. We’ve put our company contact information right there on the first screen and had everything scroll freely down. We have minimal menus or navigation. We’ve just used software behind the website to try its best to adapt to the viewers environment.
I'm not saying we've done anything special or even that our site is any good, let's be honest, Mergers and Acquisitions is never going to be riveting reading at the best of times unless it's your company we selling or buying (then it's fascinating, I can assure you) but when we rebranded AA Chase last year, we felt it was worth taking the extra time and effort to ensure that we didn't frustrate our mobile visitors and according to websites analytics, we've done a good job, with over half of our website visitors coming from mobile devices.
After our experience, maybe you could consider how people see your company’s website from their mobile device?
