The Importance of Building a Mobile-Friendly Website

Are You Missing Out On Clients? You May Be If Your Website Isn’t Mobile Ready

A website is an essential part of business today. From providing information about your firm and practice areas to driving prospective clients to take action, your website lays the foundation for your connection with clients. However, that means your website needs to appeal to clients based on how they use it. You may have a beautiful, dynamic desktop website, but if it’s not mobile-friendly, you’re missing out on an important part of your online presence.

Mobile technology today

In our technology driven world, mobile internet traffic surpasses desktop traffic by approximately 3% per year. Desktops and laptops are used at home and in business, but most people utilize mobile devices while on the go. People of all ages use smartphones and tablets, to work online, browse social media, and read the news. The constant access to content has created a society that demands instant information, including while on the go. As a result, many websites have adapted to create mobile-friendly formatting, so that website visitors can get what they need whether they’re sitting at a desk with a traditional computer, using their tablet while commuting to work or from their mobile phone while shopping on the weekend.

Reasons to have mobile-friendly websites

Mobile-friendly websites are not just a convenience for a small percentage of users any longer. It is a necessity because of the way people use mobile technology today. However, it’s more than just simply about accessibility on mobile devices. There are a number of reasons that mobile-friendly websites are a good idea for your firm. Understanding these reasons can help highlight the value of this approach for your firm’s business goals.

Users want mobile access. Even though people use desktops for work or personal reasons, chances are they also use mobile devices. People have gotten so used to instant access to information that they expect to be able to find anything on their mobile devices that they would on their desktop computers. Without a mobile-friendly website, your prospective clients will not have easy access to information about your firm on their mobile devices.

Make it easier for prospective clients to contact you. Mobile ready websites provide any website visitor with the ability to instantly contact you using easily clickable buttons (phone or email).

Google likes mobile-friendly content. Google’s all-important algorithm prioritizes mobile-friendly websites. Google knows that most people are online using mobile devices, so they want their search results to match the search needs of the majority of their users. By optimizing your website to be mobile-friendly in formatting and content, your SEO content will be more effective, and your site will rank higher in search results when prospective clients use your keywords and phrases in searching. Whether your prospective clients are searching on desktop or mobile, your mobile-friendly site will make Google happy and help you site to rank well.

Mobile-friendly content is more sharable. Sharing is an important way to spread information. From links on social media to text messaging websites to friends and family, people want to be able to share what they see and like. However, if your site is not mobile-friendly, sharing from desktop to mobile doesn’t work very well. Even if a client wants to share information with others, the information the new client gets won’t be in a format that appeals to them, and they may not take the time to save the link to read it on their desktop.

Stay competitive. Your competitors, especially those with successful internet marketing programs, have already integrated a mobile version of their website. If you want to keep up, get busy.

Ways to make your website mobile-friendly

It’s not difficult to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Whether you are building a new site or working with an existing site, here are things you can do to make your site easier to use on mobile devices:

Make your site responsive. That means it will automatically adapt to the size of the screen used, including mobile devices. Along similar lines, it’s important to include the viewport meta tag so that browsers will fit the width of your site page to the device your customer is using.
Think about the information your prospective clients need. By making important information clearly visible, your users won’t have to figure out how to navigate a site to find valuable information. This may be your menu, your homepage, or your contact information. You can use site metrics to find out the type of information your users view most often to help you decide.
Avoid flash. Not only is flash bad for SEO, but it can slow down your site’s loading time considerably. Not all mobile devices support flash, which means some people won’t be able to load your site properly.
Pay attention to button and font sizes. Users can get irritated quickly if they have trouble clicking buttons or reading content on their mobile devices. No one wants to have to zoom in on a site just to easily navigate your site.
Compress images. High quality images can slow your site’s load time dramatically. By compressing all of the images on your website, you will be able to give a website visitor a better user experience regardless of their device preference.
Test mobile and desktop versions of the site. Whenever you make changes or update your content, be sure to test both versions of your site. That will ensure that your site is mobile optimized and your users will be able to access all the information quickly and easily.

Whether you’re redesigning your site to make it more attractive to your target demographic or you want to take advantage of mobile technology with your site’s formatting, a mobile-friendly website is an important part of successful online business. More people use the internet on mobile devices than desktops, so having a mobile-friendly site means being able to engage with the majority of your target demographic. By making changes to your site so that it adapts to mobile devices, you’ll be able to share information with your clients and achieve your firm’s business goals, as well as your website metric goals.

If you have questions about mobile search or building a mobile friendly website Sundown Legal Marketing specializes in helping law firms review their current internet footprint, developing a comprehensive internet marketing plan and implementing every aspect of that plan. Contact us today for a free website evaluation and a no obligation assessment of your internet marketing plan. Call us today at (800) 864-1764 or online at Sundown Marketing Group.