Are you losing business by not not having a mobile & tablet compatible website?
In recent years there’s been a huge shift in how people browse the web and the way they interact with websites. With tablet and mobile phones now accounting for 17.4% of of web use and more than half of all time spent on the internet when accounting for app use too. By having a website that isn’t optimised for these smaller screens you risk alienating a huge portion of your potential customers.
There’s no downside to making your website mobile compatible – it needn’t affect the experience of desktop and laptop users in the slightest.
Some of the main things people use mobile and tablets for are locating stores where they can make a purchase, researching items and services before making a transaction and actually buying things online (both services and products, whether physical or digital). The trend looks set to continue, with everything pointing to even more small screen use in the future – perhaps even tiny screens if smartwatches are anything to go by!
Mobile should no longer be an afterthought, it should be your first thought.
For a long time portable compatibility been an afterthought for many business owners, but since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and now almost ubiquitous adoption of the smartphone over traditional mobile phones in the last few years mobile web browsing is no longer the future but the present.
In many cases a website incompatible with mobiles and tablets indicates that either the website is old and should probably be rebuilt from the ground up with mobile compatibility baked right in, or that the website was built recently but without an understanding of the importance of having a website suitable for use with tablets and smartphones. Whilst you might be able to “get away with it” – why would you? If ~20% and counting of your potential customers are immediately faced with a site that doesn’t look great on their device they could be turned off and a poor site could cost you the sale. Every day day you decide not to have a website that works properly on mobile and tablet devices is another day of potentially lost revenue.
Have you browsed the web on a small screen this week?
Ask yourself this – how long this week have you personally spent browsing websites on your phone or tablet computer compared with how long you’ve spent browsing on a desktop computer or laptop? In the younger demographics the divide is strongest, with the majority of all internet use done on mobile devices and a huge amount of money spent each year through mobile and tablet channels. Even in the older sections of society smaller screens are taking over, with devices such as the Tesco Hudl with its 7″ screen being so affordable, many have opted to move the bulk of their web browsing to such devices.
Current trends in mobile web development
A lot has been written about web design for portable devices – it started out with WAP on the likes of the Nokia 3330, a slow text-based alternative web with very few sites. Since then things have moved on significantly, with many smartphones now more powerful than a two year old computer. The current best-practice thinking is to create “responsive designs” – a single website layout that works on both large and small screens and automatically and discreetly scales to an appropriate size. This is what Mighty Designs can do for you.
Dual screening and lack of attention
Not only have the devices people use to browse the internet and make purchasing decisions online changed in recent years, media consumption as a whole has changed too. Lots of people engage in what is called “dual-screening” – viewing information on phones or tablets whilst watching television at the same time. Obviously this means that attention can be hugely reduced. Sometimes people look up details related to the programme (“who’s that actor? I know I’ve seen him in something recently..”) but it’s just as likely that they’re doing something completely unrelated, like viewing email or shopping for clothes. The upshot of this is that the attention a user has for your website is more scarce and valuable than ever – if your website doesn’t load fast, doesn’t look great on mobile and doesn’t have clear value propositions or calls to action then you’ll quickly be forgotten.
It’s clear that now more than ever the importance of your website working well on a mobile device can make all the difference
Whether you’re building a new site, upgrading an old one or have a website that uses Adobe flash and want to learn more about what responsive website design and mobile-ready web design means for you, Mighty Designs can help.
Get in touch and we’ll make your website work for you
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