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Google announced that by April more preference would be given to the mobile optimized websites in search results. If we consider the Google’s share in search, it nearly owns 90% any updates that attracts crowd and let alone the algorithm change is a matter of fact.
Google reported in their Webmaster Central blog that they would expand use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal from April 21. This change is surely going to affect the mobile search across the map in different languages and surely going to have a significant effect on search results.
But look its 2015 and yet many websites are missing an optimized website for their mobile viewers. If you are one of those guilty parties, what do you think should be your next move? Will you create a separate mobile website? Will you install a mobile theme?
Well, let us raise the curtains from the solution –
It’s Mobile- Friendly Web Designs
Just one URL, one HTML code, and compatibility on any screen size, all DONE!
Ethan Marcotte in 2010 conceived the concept of responsive web designs in approach to prioritize the users experience. The approach helped to reduce the need of re-size, zoom, or pan a web page across a wide range of devices. Besides, it offered users with optimal reading experience.
Marcotte outlined in his groundbreaking article A List Apart, about the combination, which responsive designs uses. A strong combination of fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries give designs the ability to adapt whatever screen size they are displayed on, regardless of the resolution.
Ethan clicked with the idea when one of his clients asked for a separate iPhone website and the former realized that separating a sub-domain is not going to work on a long way. He got it right there.
With the toll in the number of Smartphone users, doubling of the tablet shipment since 2012, add in laptops, video game consoles, Smart TVs, smart watches, cars, and even home appliances beside very own things called desktop computers, the result is an always-growing of digital devices and screen resolutions.
Why use mobile-friendly web design?
#REASON 1: Simple, because Google endorsed it
It is long before Google announced their upcoming algorithm update they have publicly endorsed responsive web design in 2012. Google and their recommended design patterns is said to have one URL to make things easier for the search engines so that they do not have to crawl and index the multiple versions of the same website and nearly twice as many pages.
That use of one URL is not going to help Google to a lot extent but it has loads of benefits for your business. This includes –
- For SEO, it helps to build the link authority for a single web address.
- For Social Sharing, you simply need to use one link, to prevent confusion, and wherever the link is viewed (mobile, tablet, desktop) the content will appear clear and readable.
- For Saving Money, as a single URL means only a version of your website that you need to maintain and work on.
- For Saving Time, you do not need to test your website across multiple devices or browser and it will look great everywhere
#REASON 2: It’s for better user experience
Gosh, that takes a lot of time when you wait for the non-responsive desktop version of a website to load on your mobile. You feel disgusted; it is same with your users when they open your non-responsive website on their mobile. Then after the page loads, remember the number of times you have to pan or zoom just to read the content you were looking for?
So as the feeling are same on your website users part as well, so you have to realize that it broadens the user’s chance to bounce from your website and go somewhere else -may be to your competitors site. No few seconds only can’t make them bounce, it might half a second that could set the difference between a user that stays and converts and takes off together.
As per the 2014 study conducted by Strangeloop Networks a bunch of figures came up that shows some trends of user experience on mobile, that will ensure success in mobile website development –
- 47% of users expect web pages to load in just two seconds
- 57% of visitors bounce from your page if the load time is more than three seconds
- 8% of online shoppers feels slow web pages is the biggest reason to abandon their purchase midway
Your customer wants a fast user experience; they will not be patients when it comes to web page load times. This is the case for desktop and laptop browsing but even more on the mobile devices, when people are on the go and multitasks as it is just by reading an article.
Smartphone and tablets get faster day by day but having a website that follow mobile optimization and their best practices ensures better readability and faster load times for the users as well. Responsive web design is able to prioritize user experience and in focused more contents, quickly loads what you are looking for while making the content easy to read on the mobile devices. It is not surprising that Google emphasizes these elements in search of the rankings as well to expect the pages on mobile to load it in less than one second. It is not so surprising that Google is able to emphasize on these elements in the search rankings as well. You need to expect pages on mobile to load it less than one second.
Well, if you have not yet made your website mobile-friendly, Google’s upcoming algorithm updates will definitely set you back behind the competitors. Now it is time to look at the responsive web design and look at the benefits that you can derive from it.
