A mobile-friendly website is an essential for every marketer to develop a successful SEO strategy. There are more marketers optimizing their websites to be mobile-friendly as well, so what are you waiting for?

With more people using their mobiles to access the Internet these days, you are risking to lose visitors if you still don’t optimize your website for mobile. But before we get into the details, you can check how mobile-friendly your website is from this tool by Google Developers.

If you get a good score, then well done! But if your website is not doing well, it means that it’s time for you to optimize your website for mobile and here are the reasons why you should do so:

1. The Increase Of Mobile Adoption Rate

The mobile adoption rate is increasing every year ever since Google included the websites that are optimized for mobile as “mobile-friendly” on the mobile search results. Whereas for the websites that are not mobile-friendly, it will affect your click-through rate (CTR) negatively because users tend to exit the sites when they found out that it’s not mobile-friendly.

If you didn’t know, Google is already using mobile-friendly websites as a ranking factor. So if your website isn’t ranking well on Google, you should really think about it. What problem can it be? Is it because it’s not mobile-friendly? Well, it could be.

Based on a report from comScore, mobile usage has outreached desktop usage for the first time in the mid of 2014, and it’s still increasing during 2015.

This has proven that you should start optimizing your website for mobile. You wouldn’t want to lose visitors, right?

To have a mobile-friendly website, you have to make sure that the font size and images used in your website wouldn’t be too small or else your visitors will have a hard time reading your content.

Remember, you have to keep the visitors happy when they stumble upon your website, even if it’s your mobile site.

2. Mobile Is Convenient To Everyone

As inbound marketers, we all know that it is extremely important to help our visitors to complete their tasks, whether it is reading an interesting article or checking on a store’s location.

Well, we don’t usually bring our laptop when we’re just going out for dinner, right? Our mobile is always with us. So whenever we’re looking for the best place to eat mac and cheese or the best steak in town, we will just search for it on our mobile. There is no need for us to turn on our laptops just to search for one thing.

Mobile is so convenient for us these days. Even when we want to read for some reviews or short articles, especially before we sleep, we can just read it on our mobile instead of turning on our laptop. Not only it is convenient, but I’d say that it saves a lot of time as well! At least, we don’t have to wait for our laptop to load.

If you still don’t believe that mobile usage is increasing, let’s take a look at this infographic about the mobile usage in 2015:

The statistics given are only for 2015. Can you imagine how much it has increased in 2016?

You can’t deny the fact that the average user engages with their mobile device for 200 times a day. And this is why you should have a mobile-friendly website. People are browsing on mobile more than on desktop.

3. Keep Up With The Industry

Many websites are already making their sites mobile-friendly, are you sure that you don’t want to keep up with them?

BuzzFeed has made a good move on optimizing their site for mobile as they know they have a lot of visitors using mobile.

If you noticed, most blog posts title are now starting with where, why, and how. This is because many users are searching using voice searches such as Siri, Google Now, and Cortana. For example, when they use voice search, they don’t usually start by saying “SEO”. In fact, they will talk as if they’re talking to a friend, “what is SEO?”.

This is actually one of the best parts of having a mobile-friendly website because you can provide the users with what they want, even when they are asking questions like they’re communicating with a friend. In this way, they will feel satisfied because you can give them accurate information and they will definitely visit your site again.

Like I mentioned on the above, mobile is convenient, which explains why most people are searching for information using mobile rather than desktop. This has proven that mobile is taking over desktop and if you still don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you will be left out. However, it is still not too late now for you to optimize your website for mobile.

4. Improve Engagement And User Experience

Not only you have to keep up with the industry, but with a mobile-friendly website, you will get to increase the engagement with your visitors and their user experience.

Since it has proven that many people are using mobile searches, imagine if you have a mobile-friendly website. Your visitors will stay even longer on your site, which will help to improve their time on site.

If your mobile site is stated as mobile-friendly by Google Developers, then you will highly likely improve your user experience.

When your mobile site is easy to navigate, your bounce rate will reduce, and eventually, your visitors will spend more time on your site, which will increase the chances of them purchasing your products or services.

But if the visitors can’t browse and read your content on mobile, they will leave your site. Kissmetrics has shown that a 1 second delay in page response can results in a 7% reduction in conversions. Imagine how many sales you could have lost if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website.

Therefore, you have to keep your visitors happy when they are browsing on your mobile site. If you’d like to know what kind of mobile-friendly website is attractive to the visitors, you can refer to Zhi Yuan’s post where he has compiled 20 beautiful examples of mobile-friendly website.

5. Mobile Shopping Is Taking Over

These days, online shoppers have quickly started to favor using their mobile devices when browsing and buying products online. Even now, we have apps like Etsy and Shopkick to make online shopping easier.

Some consumers prefer to do business with an online retailer if it has a mobile-friendly site because it makes things easier. Although desktop is widely used for the majority of online sales, but mobile is catching up right now.

Like what I mentioned earlier, mobile is really convenient for all of us. So when the users wanted to purchase something online, they can just install the apps or go directly to the website on their mobile and make a purchase from there instead of turning on their laptops.

Since users are spending more time on mobiles than desktop, there is really no reasons for you to not optimize your website for mobile.

Conclusion: Be Mobile Ready

Now that you know why a mobile-friendly website is so important for your SEO, you should read Zhi Yuan’s post to find out how to make your website mobile-friendly.

As pointed out, if you want more conversions and sales for your business, it is a must to have a mobile-friendly website. In this year of 2016, having a mobile-friendly website will be extremely important compared to 2015 as Google is using mobile-friendly sites as a ranking factor. This means that if you do not have a mobile version of your site, you will be missing the Google ranking.

Even Google has advised everyone to have their site’s mobile-friendly for Google search results. So, make sure to stay ahead of the curve and be mobile ready.

What are your thoughts about mobile-friendly websites? Do you think that it’s important, and why? Do share it with us in the comment section down below.

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Updated: 3 December 2024

About Allysa

Allysa is always eager to learn something new whenever she got some free time and that includes SEO and inbound marketing. She also has a passion for traveling and discovering the unknowns.