April 27, 2015
Categories:
Is your web site mobile friendly?
Mobilegeddon
As of April 21st Google made a major change where sites that are not considered mobile friendly will be ranked lower on searches made on mobile devices. It is important that businesses understand these changes and make sure that their site is mobile friendly.
What does this mean?
First of all, it is important to understand exactly what these changes mean. If your site is not mobile friendly, it will not effect search results made from desktops, laptops, or tablets. It will only effect searches made from mobile devices such as an iPhone, Android phone, or iTouch.
It will also only effect generic, non-branded queries. For example if ABC Furniture Store does not have a mobile friendly site and you search "furniture store" from your smartphone, ABC Furniture Store probably won't appear in the results. However, if you search "ABC Furniture" on your phone, ABC Furniture Store should still appear at or near the top of the results.
This change also will only effect individual sites that are deemed not mobile friendly. For example if your home page is mobile friendly and your "Contact Us" page is not mobile friendly, then your home page will still appear in search results on smartphones, but your "Contact Us" page will appear much lower down. Therefore even if you can't make your entire web site mobile friendly, it would be a good idea to make at least your home page mobile friendly.
Finally, just because you didn't update your page by April 21st doesn't mean that Google will never show your page on a search from a phone ever again. Google is constantly crawling the web, so once you update your web site to make it mobile friendly, Google will see it, and you will reappear on searches made from smart phones.
So how do I know if my web site is mobile friendly?
Google uses its algorithms to determine whether or not your site is mobile friendly. There are three main things that Google looks at:
1. Are touch elements too close?
A touch element would a link or anything else that you would normally click on while viewing a site on a computer. On a phone since you don't have a mouse, you need to touch these objects. If you have two links really close together it makes it difficult for a phone user to touch the correct link. Its very important that you make links large enough or far enough away from other links so that visitors to your site can easily touch them.
2. Is your viewport configured?
This might be the trickiest thing to understand because what is a viewport? Its quite simple, the viewport is simply the size of the screen you are viewing the page on. On a tablet or computer you have a large screen so you can fit a wider web site design onto it. However on a phone you have a very narrow screen, if your site uses a wide design then it will not fit very well onto a phone. So you need to make sure that your mobile site uses a narrow, stream-lined design.
3. Do you use a small font size?
This should be the easiest thing to fix. Obviously using a small font size makes it very difficult to read your site. Combine this with the small screens that we have on a phone and its nearly impossible to read your site. So quite simply all you have to is use large or normal sized fonts.
To find out if Google considers your site mobile friendly you can submit it to Google's Mobile Friendly Test.
How can this effect my business?
If most people visiting your business's site are using a desktop computer, then this will have very little impact on your business. However, if many people access your site from their phones then this could have a very large impact on your business.
Not only will your site appear much lower on Google searches made from a phone, but more importantly, visitors will have a very hard time reading and navigating your site from their phones. As a result, even if they find your site, they will be less likely to read or stay on your site.
If you are at a trade show, most people you meet will be looking at your web site on their phone. So make sure they are impressed with what they see. A clean, easy-to-read design will leave them with a much better impression of your business.
If you have sales reps who use their phones to show your product, it is very important that your website looks good on a phone. It can be very hard to make a sale if it is very hard to show your product.
So Google implementing these new rules can actually be a very good thing, especially if you do not have a mobile friendly site. This might just give you the motivation to create a mobile friendly site. And with a new mobile friendly site you might start getting a lot of new business from people who primarily use their smartphones to surf the web.
If your new mobile web site is leading to higher sales volumes and you don't have enough working capital to keep up with it, give DSA Factors a call today at 773-248-9000. With accounts receivable factoring you will have the improved cash flow you need to grow your business and take on more and larger orders.
