If you haven’t already embraced the idea of mobile-first design, now’s the time – mobile surfing now accounts for 60 percent of online usage. If you’re not accommodating mobile users through your site or email messages, you may well be losing out on sales.
But there’s an even stronger motivation you’ll want to consider, moving forward. Google has recently indicated that it will soon be weighing mobile user experience in its algorithms to determine search ranking. Meaning, if your site provides a poor mobile user experience, it could seriously damage your rankings, meaning you could ultimately lose traffic to your site.
GoogleBot Sees All
These days, Google’s spider doesn’t just look at your code – it looks at the way your page actually renders on different devices. So issues with usability on your mobile platforms – like font sizing, button size, and the need to zoom to view some content – won’t go unnoticed.
The move is unsurprising, considering Google’s recent focus on high-quality content. If a poor user experience affects the way people enjoy content, they’ll leave the site. Simple as that. The most obvious way for a company to offer the best possible user experience is to add the factors mentioned above into its ever-changing search algorithms.
Preparing Your Site
Google has been penalizing sites that generate mobile errors since July 2013, but the search giant has not yet started actively penalizing usability issues. It has, however, released a new tool for mobile testing, called Fetch as Google, that allows for multiple types of mobile testing on rendered pages. This shows a definite dedication to improved mobile usability. What does Fetch test for?
When will Google make the move? It’s hard to say – their latest update of the Penguin algorithm was a year in the making, and updates are generally rolled out quietly and without advance notice. So if you haven’t been focused on the mobile experience, now is definitely the time to get started on overhauling your smartphone and tablet presentation. The quality of that experience may well affect where your site shows up in Google’s search results.
Mobile Critical in eCommerce
Where does eCommerce come into play? If you think that mobile isn’t a big deal for eCommerce, think again. During the 2013 holiday season, a third of all eCommerce purchases were made on smartphones. Mobile is now an integral part of buying and selling online, and that’s not going to change – in fact, it will only grow more important.
Ultimately, creating the strongest possible user experience on your site – both for desktop and mobile surfing – is a win-win proposition. One of the core principles of digital marketing is to meet your users where they are – and these days, they’re on mobile. Providing them with a stellar experience can only help in terms of boosting your sales.