RESPONSIVE
WEBSITES
Is your website responsive or mobile friendly?
Google likes websites to be ‘responsive’, ‘adaptive’ and ‘mobile friendly’ – this means they resize to fit any device.
Older sites and those built on WIX, tend not to be, meaning they may not rank as highly as their competition.
In July 2018, Google started rolling out their ‘Mobile First’ program (learn more about that here) so if your website isn’t mobile friendly then it could mean that your site isn’t highly ranked on mobile searches. And, with more and more people using mobile phones to search the internet, you could potentially be losing a lot of traffic.
Have you received one of those dreaded emails from Google advising that your WordPress website needs ‘fixing’ for mobiles?
On April 21st 2015, Google introduced a new algorithm (yes, again) nicknamed ‘Mobilegeddon’ – meaning that all website’s that are not ‘responsive’ or ‘mobile friendly’- i.e. that don’t resize for the device they are, will be penalised in Google mobile searches. Which means searches carried out on mobile phones and tablets.
Whilst it might not affect desktop searches, with more and more people using search engines on mobile devices, this could be catastrophic for businesses that are penalised and they could see a dramatic reduction in traffic.
So, how can you make your site mobile-friendly?
If your website has a static design, there are 3 options, ranging in cost:
- You can have a full redesign – it may not be the cheapest option but there’s nothing like a good freshen up to show your business off to it’s best potential.
- Have your website theme changed (this is often called re-skinning) – frankly it can be as costly as a rebuild but if can be cheaper if you’re strict with only changing the essentials.
- Have a ‘mobile’ version made using the current design – this can sometimes be just as expensive as a full rebuild, depending how your current site is built. And, Google does prefer your site to work on a variety of devices as well as just on mobile phones so this option isn’t recommended as a long term solution.
