Business
Why you need a responsive site, now!
If you’ve not already done it, now is the time to stop putting off making your business ‘mobile-friendly’. Everyone is taking the leap and if you don’t you’re going to get left behind.
The pressure to go mobile has been mounting on webmasters over the last few years, especially for those who rely on traffic from Google. The big ‘G’ started to pile the pressure by making ‘Mobile-Friendly’ appear alongside websites it considered to offer a decent mobile experience, frequent warning messages would also spring up in Webmaster Tools.
This month the pressure turned into something of a do or die order. Google announced that as of April 21st, the giant engine will be penalising sites it doesn’t deem to be mobile friendly.
‘Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal,’ said Google.
So the proof is there, if your site is not living in the mobile world you are going to need to do something about it, fast! If not, you are likely to see a significant drop in traffic from mobile devices.
Fortunately all is not lost, there are various approaches you can take. Probably the most effective method is to make your site ‘fully responsive’. This practice uses special CSS to give your site a different layout according to the dimensions of the screen it is being displayed on.
If you’ve got a site that runs on a CMS, such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, you have less to fear. Switching your theme to a fully responsive design could solve your problem in little more than a few clicks.
The real headache is for those who do not use a CMS or those who have a highly customised theme. Adapting these themes to be fully responsive could be a mammoth task that could cost a fortune.
If you cannot even begin to get your head around going responsive, consider creating a ‘mobile optimised’ site. This is generally a second best option, but it is good enough to save you in the eyes of Google.
Take www.rocketbingo.co.uk as an example, this is one of the bingo sites that has hurried to achieve that all-important mobile friendliness. This site has a static HTML structure with no CMS system at all, making an update to all pages an extremely labour intensive strategy. Therefore, the webmaster opted to go for the ‘mobile optimised’ approach.
This approach essentially involves building a separate site that is served only to mobile devices. It’s effective and it’s definitely worth looking into if for you, the idea of introducing a responsive theme just isn’t on the cards. Again if you use a CMS such as Drupal, there are modules that can manage the serving of a mobile optimised site.
Result: ‘Mobile-friendly’ badge awarded to Rocket Bingo!
So in conclusion, making your site appealing and compatible for mobile users is a must. If this is news to you, looking into ‘Responsive’ themes and ‘Optimised Sites’ is a good place to start your journey. Good Luck!
