If Your Website Isn't Mobile Friendly, Google Will Punish You

From Google: "Starting April 21st, 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 on our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices." 

So the proverbial "other shoe" has dropped. For the previous year Google has been telling business owners to make their websites mobile friendly.  Now they are telling you that if your site is not mobile friendly, you will be significantly penalized in the search rankings. 

Why are they doing this?  

"The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior."

More than 50% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices - smartphones and tablets.  We have seen this trend for months in the YMCA websites we have built.  Now Google is confirming what we have suspected all along.  Across all businesses, consumers are using mobile devices to access websites more than PCs.  

Mobile marketing will dominate website access because consumers are in control. Simply put, consumers are buying mobile devices, not PCs.

PC sales peaked in 2011 at 350 million units worldwide after 29 years of sales (since 1983). Seven years after launch, smartphones and tablets have sold more than 1.2 billion units.  So Google is merely following consumer behavior.

It is important to realize that Google's primary mission is to provide the very best search results to consumers. And if consumers are using mobile devices, Google is going to weight their search results based on this consumer behavior.  If consumers do not get the actionable results expected (access to the information they want on the device they prefer), they may go to one of Google's competitors - Yahoo or Bing.  So Google has finally decided to weight the search results to favor mobile friendliness.

So how do you make your site mobile friendly?  You have two options. One is to build a second site that is mobile friendly.  Google has said that it will provide rankings for "mobile only" sites. 

However, as the operator of this mobile site, you will now have to support two websites - twice the work.  There is an easier way.

The preferred method is to build your website in responsive design.  Responsive design means that your website reads the request to view your website, determines the device the consumer is using and then reconfigures the website display to match the device.  It forces the website configuration to present the version of the website that looks the best on that device.  

Think of the movie Transformers.  And you only have one website to support.  Thrive only builds websites in responsive design.  

April 21st is a watershed moment in digital marketing and it will be remembered for years to come. The largest search engine in the world has formally announced that the battle for internet access has been won by the mobile consumer. Those that embrace this truth will win and continue to see their websites appear in the Google Search Results. Those who ignore it will drop out of the search results and suffer the subsequent decreases in site traffic.

Do you want to know if your website is mobile friendly?  Here is a easy way to tell.  Pull up your site on your smartphone and see if you can easily read the phone for your YMCA.  If you can't, give us a call.

Do you need help with your mobile strategy?  Give Thrive a call at 419-776-7000 or drop me an email at jeff@thriveim.com.  We are here to help!

Five Ideas to Launch a Mobile Campaign With Little or No Money Down

Now that the excitement of the holiday season and the Super Bowl are behind us, it’s time to get back to looking at some research and best practices. 

33%Of Paid-Search Clicks Coming From Mobile Devices

“Mobile devices drove consumers to spend more time online while on the go. Paid-search marketers worldwide allocated 34.4% to mobile devices in 2013, with phones capturing 17.7% and tablets receiving 16.7% -- up from 20.5% in 2012.”

Retailers Are Driving Huge Increases In Mobile Shopping And Buying — This Is How

“On Black Friday this past year, sales on mobile devices accounted for more than 20% of U.S. e-commerce spending. Traffic from mobile was even bigger, accounting for almost 40% of total online shopping visits that day.” 

Six Trends for 2014 in Mobile Marketing and Advertising

“With over 75% growth in mobile advertising in 2013 (AdAgeMobile Fact Pack) mobile is no longer an emerging channel.”

“The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior.”

Knowing that consumers are stampeding to mobile devices doesn’t mean that you are ready to engage them on mobile devices. 

Recently I worked on a display campaign for a client with a mobile component.  So I visited the “mobile” landing url and saw that the client did not have a mobile friendly web site.  What I found myself staring at was a large web site smashed into a little 4 inch screen.  It could have been the best offer in the history of retailing, but I would never know.  I simply could not see what the company was offering, much less be able to navigate to find it. 

Five Ideas to Launch a Mobile Campaign for Little to No Money

·       First have a mobile enabled web site.  Ideally you have a responsive web site (or plans to launch a responsive web site). 

·       But if your site isn’t mobile friendly, you can still have a mobile campaign. 

o   Build a mobile site.  There are tools that allow you to build mobile web sites for a very small investment.  $Hundreds, not $Thousands.  If you don’t have these tools, contact me.  If the only thing that is stopping you from mobile advertising is a mobile site, I am going to fix that problem. 

o   Keep in mind that most of our clients do not need a fully function ecommerce mobile web site.  They need a way for the sales prospect to contact them in the manner most convenient to them – email, phone, walk in the front door. 

o   Make sure you have the basics in place. 

o   Import a logo and few graphics/photos.

o   Add your contact information – Name, address and phone number. 

o   Add a “Click here for directions”. 

o   Post your hours of operation.

o   It is a mobile site.  Use Click to Call.  Questions?  “Click here to talk to a real human!”  (When was the last time a business encouraged you to call them?)

o   Add a mobile offer.  “Bring your phone in, show this coupon for a free dessert, save $5, Save 10%, etc. 

·       Eliminate clicks.  Make sure the ad takes you to the page where the customer can say “Yes, I’ll take it.” 

·       Want to know if the mobile site is working?  Use an offer or tracking code that the consumer would not see anywhere else.  Save $5.55!  Make this offer unique to this mobile campaign.

·       Track the results.  If you don’t have a computer system to track the sales, use a shoe box.  Print a stack of coupons with the mobile offer on it.  Every time a consumer uses the “mobile coupon”, write the total sale amount onto a coupon and throw it in a box.  At the end of the day/week/promotion, add up the amounts and see how successful the promotion was… 

Mobile advertising is exciting and frightening at the same time.  But there are ways to engage customers without initially spending a lot of money…

Seven Facts Marketers Need to Know About Mobile Users