Mobile-Friendly Websites More Important Than Ever

by Andrew Schulkind

There’s a storm brewing, and it goes by the name “Mobilegeddon.” Slated to make landfall on April 21st (ok, I’ll stop with the weather stuff), this update from Google has a lot of people breathlessly spilling a lot of ink about its implications for search and digital marketing. And for good reason.

The two key take-aways for content marketers, and digital marketers in general are:

Know your numbers – track your site’s performance for the mobile audience
Get responsive – make your site mobile-friendly using the mobile analytics data you have

Clearly, Google is shifting its priorities to match the priorities of those using its search tools. We have seen the number of mobile users on our own and our client sites grow pretty dramatically over the past 2 years.

Still, the numbers are very specific to your business and your audience. We have B2B clients with mobile audiences ranging from 1% to 19%. (Most fall between 9% and 13%.)

On the B2C and not-for-profit side, the numbers are typically higher, with most sites seeing between 30% and 55% mobile visitors, but there are still outliers with very small mobile audiences.

Granted, our sample size is relatively small – call or email and I’ll give you the details – but it is large enough to highlight the limited value of broad industry trends. Tracking your own analytics data and knowing your business is the only way you can adjust your site to meet your audience’s needs.

Be sure to look beyond the overview – though that’s important. Dig deeper to see patterns in the specific content that is and is not consumed by mobile visitors, and what pages have the highest exit rates.

That information should guide your efforts at responsive coding and, where necessary, device-specific coding. Google offers some guidelines and advice on their webmaster blog. They’re worth a look.

Recommendations for building smartphone-optimized websites

Finding more mobile-friendly search results

And if they can’t answer your questions, give a shout and we’ll see if we can point you in the right direction.

--- Strategy, Research & Planning ---

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