- Your Websites Are Now Mobile Friendly Resorts
- Your Websites Are Now Mobile Friendly Hotels
- Your Websites Are Now Mobile Friendly Cell Phones
- Your Websites Are Now Mobile Friendly Countries
Announcement
We specialize in creating a mobile phone friendly version for your existing website or converting your entire site to responsive with a fresh 2017 full screen design. Your customers will easily find you and navigate your website on from any phone, tablet and any sized desktop screen. The mobile user can now access all features on your website without having to scroll or zoom web texts. Your webpage can be easily optimized to become mobile friendly, if it is designed to support screens of diverse sizes and fluid percentages.
Just yesterday, Google made an announcement that should dispel any doubts about whether to act now in revamping your website to make it mobile-friendly. Here is what Google said on March 16, 2016 in its blog post Continuing to make the web more mobile friendly:
Today we’re announcing that beginning in May, we’ll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.
That means that Google will start penalizing websites that are not easy to use on mobile devices by lowering their rankings on its mobile search results pages.
How it started
Google started their push for mobile-friendly websites a couple of years ago with a series of updates.
1. Google update of November 18, 2014 Helping users find mobile-friendly pages:
Have you ever tapped on a Google Search result on your mobile phone, only to find yourself looking at a page where the text was too small, the links were tiny, and you had to scroll sideways to see all the content? This usually happens when the website has not been optimized to be viewed on a mobile phone. This can be a frustrating experience for our mobile searchers. Starting today, to make it easier for people to find the information that they’re looking for, we’re adding a 'mobile-friendly' label to our mobile search results.
2. Google update of February 26, 2015 Finding more mobile-friendly search results:
... we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.
3. Google update of April 21, 2015 Rolling out the mobile-friendly update:
We’re boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. Now searchers can more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.
Call to action
Google itself does not make websites more mobile friendly, but it nudges you – website owners, creators and publishers – to make your websites mobile friendly. The translation of the Google announcement is this: either you hurry up and make your website mobile friendly, or we will penalize your website by lowering its search ranking.
Even if Google wasn't doing this, it's important to think about your website's usability, not just its searchability. Today, more and more people use mobile devices to access the web. Millennials are nearly 100% on mobile devices. Let’s say you have a website that is not mobile-friendly; when people find it on their mobile device, they realize within seconds that it is extremely hard to navigate and use, so they depart from it in favor of a better, mobile-friendly website. You just lost a potential customer to a mobile-friendly competitor.
Most website owners and web publishers have realized the necessity and followed through with their mobile-friendly website upgrades. However, some are still falling behind; if you are one of them, now is the time to catch up.
If you are not sure whether your website is considered mobile-friendly by Google, you can check it out with this Google tool.
Lenetek offers inexpensive responsive web design solution to make your website mobile-friendly, so you are able to reach the ever-growing crowd of mobile device users.
I get a lot of questions about the differences between mobile-friendly vs mobile-optimization vs responsive design for websites. These questions include:
- What is a mobile-friendly website?
- What is mobile-optimization?
- What is responsive design?
- What are the differences of all of the above?
- Where does mobile first design fit in?
- What is the best design strategy for my website?
My goal is to answer all of these questions, plus a few more along the way. (If you’d like a deeper explanation, or have other questions you’d like answered, just shoot me an email!.)
For clarity’s sake, when I say mobile or mobile device, I am referring to devices that are the approximate size and shape of most smartphones (mobile phones).
Ok, let’s hop to it!
Mobile-Friendly Websites
Google’s search rankings now emphasize and reward mobile-friendly websites. Many people may think that having a mobile-friendly website is good enough, and for Google’s robots it is! But this is not necessarily good enough for the visitors coming to your website. In short, mobile-friendly is the bare minimum mobile design strategy you should have for your mobile visitors.
If you aren’t sure if your website is mobile-friendly, then check-out Google’s webmaster tool. A mobile-friendly website is often just a slimmed down version of the website viewed on a desktop.
For example, as a general rule your content should be written in at least 14 or 16 pt font. It seems big, but when it gets shrunk down anything less will be hard to read. Hard to read ≠ mobile-friendly.
Mobile-friendly websites will work for mobile users, but these websites were designed for the desktop users. A smaller version of your desktop website can be functional but may not be as user friendly as it could be… And this is where mobile-optimization starts to enter the fray.
Mobile-Optimized Websites
All mobile-optimized websites are mobile-friendly, but not all mobile-friendly websites are mobile-optimized. Mobile-optimization targets mobile users; these websites are designed for smaller screens.
A mobile-optimized website will reformat itself for mobile users. It is not just a shrunken down version of the desktop website.
Design features of a mobile-optimized website can include:
- Single column layout
- Easy, simple navigation that is “thumb friendly”
- Large graphics with white-space borders for those of us with large or clumsy fingers
- Formatted content for maximum readability
- Limited to no need for typing
- Image file sizes are smaller for the mobile version of the website than those used for the desktop version of the website. (This allows for quicker load times.)
- A fewer number of features overall (minimalist, uncluttered design)
Mobile users are much more likely to be searching for a quick answer compared to their desktop search counterparts. (I tend to search for restaurants, movie reviews, and directions on my phone. I am not doing in-depth searches on my phone on technical topics like mobile-optimized design. I save those types of searches for my laptop.)
The goal of a mobile-optimized website is to make the website as frictionless as possible for the mobile user. Mobile users are seeking the quickest, most efficient way to answer their questions. Mobile-optimization aims to do exactly that.
Websites Created with Responsive Design
Responsively designed websites do exactly as phrase suggest. They “respond” to the screen size of the device being used. In a sense, responsive design picks up where mobile-optimization leaves off.
Responsive design reformats and restructures websites for any device—regardless of screen size. Mobile-optimization only does this for mobile devices. With responsive design, the layout of the website will scale from the smaller screens of mobile, tablets, and small laptops, to the standard desktop screen and even larger widescreen monitors.
Responsive design offers flexibility and great usability on all devices for users. It’s really the only way to guarantee that your website will look good and have optimized usability on any device.
If you are curious, Torspark is a responsively designed website. (Try looking at the homepage, or any other part of our website on different devices. When you do, you’ll see a different, scaled version for each device type. Or, just resize your browser and see how everything balances out on the page.)
Mobile-First Design Strategy
Mobile-first is a design strategy in which the mobile version of the website is designed first over the traditional desktop version. This design strategy can also apply to products designed for and marketed to mobile users first, ahead of “traditional” internet users.
A lot of design issues come from trying to stuff too many features into a single page. When designing with mobile-first in mind, you tend to get a simpler, cleaner design structure. This works well as a base, because it’s easier to add relevant features into the desktop view as needed, rather than trying to stuff every bell and whistle into a mobile view.
2014 was the breakout year for mobile usage—the first year mobile use surpassed daily desktop use. (Adults spent on average 2 hours and 51 minutes on mobile devices daily, but only 2 hours and 12 minutes daily on desktops.) Mobile first and responsive design strategies are becoming more in demand as the trend of increased mobile use continues. If you aren’t sure about jumping into the deep end of responsive design, a mobile first design strategy can be the first step as part of a larger responsive design strategy.
What type of design is best for my business and my website?
The not very helpful answer is “it depends”. Honestly, the answer depends on the answers to the following questions:
- What is the purpose of your website?
- What do you want your website to do for visitors?
- What devices are you expecting your visitors to be accessing your site from?
Websites are meant to take visitors on a digital journey. That journey is supposed to be as smooth and frictionless as possible. The easier you can make navigating your website, the more likely you are to increase conversions.
Also, what is the budget for your website? Mobile-optimized and responsively designed websites are often a little more expensive than mobile-friendly websites. Why? In short, they take longer to develop and build.
Your Websites Are Now Mobile Friendly Resorts
In the long run, the extra optimization to functionality and usability offered by a responsively designed or mobile-optimized site will provide you with a higher ROI than a site that is just mobile-friendly. Now, whether or not the expense is justified will have to be evaluated on a business-by-business basis.
On a side note, have you tried to use your business’s website as if you were a customer? What about as a mobile user? Do you know what your mobile site looks like? If you are drawing a blank, or have a panicky uncertain feeling right now, that’s probably not a good indicator.
Consider The Following for Mobile-Friendly vs Mobile-Optimized vs Responsive Design
Is your main customer base cruising your website on a desktop? Then maybe a mobile-friendly website is good enough for you. Google doesn’t penalize you in the search rankings, and you don’t spend extra money on a mobile-optimized or responsively designed website.
Your Websites Are Now Mobile Friendly Hotels
On the other hand…
Do you have any kind of e-commerce, blogs, or a customer base that actively uses mobile devices? If this is the case, then you may want to invest in a mobile-optimized or responsively designed website.
Mobile-Optimized and Responsively Designed Websites Can Offer a Creative User Experience
Your Websites Are Now Mobile Friendly Cell Phones
Just because visitors are viewing your website on a smaller screen, doesn’t mean your site has to be boring. Remember mobile users have the ability to take pictures and videos, make phone calls, use GPS for finding things near their location, and so much more!
And this is the beauty of stepping beyond just a mobile-friendly website. There are so many new and different user interface options for visitors NOT using a desktop. Some businesses even have completely different website versions for desktop users versus mobile users.
Your Websites Are Now Mobile Friendly Countries
Think about your visitors. What type of experience do you want them to have using your website? Optimize your website for that experience! Given the possibilities with the internet, saying the sky’s the limit seems almost diminutive.