Elon Musk was right – we’re already cyborgs. These days, our smartphones are more like a fleshy extremity than cold, unfeeling, hi-tech device. Imagine waking up to find you’re suddenly missing an arm – you’d panic a wee bit, right? Well, almost a third of users admitted feeling similar anxiety when they didn’t have their phones on them.
Mobile is a way of life now. Businesses simply cannot afford to ignore the fact that three of every five Americans own a smartphone, while nearly two-thirds of all search queries are conducted via mobile device, including tablets. Moreover, users are glued to their screens for almost three hours every day – that’s three hours of potential business-to-customer contact.
Optimizing for mobile is no longer an option, it is now a requirement if you want to keep your doors open. Here are 9 ways you can ensure your online storefront is primed for mobile browsing:
- Focus on page speed. About half of all internet users demand sites load in two seconds or less. If your site is loading in three, forty percent of your potential customers are gone. There are numerous tactics you can implement to speed up your website, including using browser caching and a reliable host service, as well as cleaning up your website’s code.
- Choose responsive designs. Nowadays, you don’t necessarily have to design multiple websites to suit desktop, tablet, and mobile browsing. Instead, a single website can be made with mobile responsive design, meaning the site will automatically adapt to screen size.
- Simplify navigation menus. Mobile users are doers. When they get to your site they expect to be able to find what they need fast. Lengthy dropdown menus and navigation buttons that are too small can hinder convenience, making potential customers more likely to bounce.
- Cater content to user intent. Catering to intent simply means making certain information or features more prominent depending on why the customer is on your site in the first place. Remember, mobile users like to take action. For example, if you own a restaurant and offer online ordering, a “click here to order” button should be one of the first options customers can see.
- Don’t use Flash. Adobe Flash is best used for online games, as the software can generate flashy interactive designs. On mobile sites, however, Flash can seriously slow your site down and will likely not work well on mobile devices. Additionally, sites designed with Flash often have difficulties ranking highly on search engine results pages (SERPs), as search engine algorithms cannot easily extract information embedded in Flash elements.
- Forget the pop-ups. Pop-up features can negatively impact your search engine rankings, as Google decided to roll out a search engine algorithm that targets sites with intrusive mobile pop-ups. Such features can be annoying, as they interrupt a user’s browsing experience.
- Optimize for Google’s special features. Google offers enriched search results, such as rich snippets and local packs, that feature prominently on SERPs, often ahead of the organic results. On a mobile device, these features dominate the screen. To be featured in one of these results, you need to optimize your website’s HTML for improved indexing.
- Sign up for Google My Business. Eight in ten local searches on mobile phones produce paying customers. Eighty percent. You can see why it is vital to optimize for local search. To do this, you need to ensure your business listing is accurate across multiple platforms. Signing up for Google My Business is also a must. Google listings offer a fast and easy way for potential customers to contact or locate your business without ever having to navigate away from the search results.
- Get on social media. Social media is now a mobile phenomenon, as nearly eighty percent of social media browsing happens via mobile device. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn serve as vital extensions of your online storefront and also allow you to target specific audiences in a way a website alone simply cannot.
If you own a small business and your online storefront isn’t optimized for mobile, you may be slashing potential revenues in half. To reclaim those profits, contact Social Spice Media today! We are always staying on top of ever-evolving tech trends to ensure your company stays ahead of the fold.
To get an idea of how your website is currently performing on mobile and desktop, get started with our fast, free website audit.
