What does “mobile-friendly” mean, and why is it important? A mobile-friendly website is easy to read and use on a phone: text is legible without zooming, buttons are easy to tap and nothing spills off the screen.
- Most people browse on phones. When this post was first written in 2014, mobile visitors had just overtaken desktop visitors. Today, more than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices.
- Customers expect it. Even back then, a Google study found that about two-thirds of people were more likely to buy from a business with a mobile-friendly site, and most would leave a site that wasn’t optimized for mobile.
- Google ranks the mobile version. Google now uses mobile-first indexing for websites, meaning it looks at the mobile version of your site to decide how to rank it in search.
It’s more important than ever to optimize your website for mobile!
How do I go mobile-friendly?
The answer is responsive design: one website that adapts to any screen size or device, so desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones all show the same content, laid out perfectly for each screen. Years ago, some businesses built a separate “mobile site” or mobile web app instead, but responsive design is now the standard, and it’s how every Pioneer Media website is built. Learn more about our mobile-friendly websites.
If your website isn’t mobile-friendly yet, contact us to discuss your options. We’re happy to show you examples of mobile-friendly sites we’ve designed, and we can check your analytics to see what percentage of your visitors use phones. Don’t let your website get left behind!
About the author
Leighton Smith is Pioneer Media’s website designer, web developer and webmaster, based in East Tennessee. As a solopreneur, he is each client’s one point of contact and has built hundreds of websites since learning to code in 2006.
