The other week at BPL, we wrote about the history of web design for mobile sites. As mobile searches and web usage continues to soar, the online community continued to adapt. Recently, search giant Google – the number one website in the world – decided to make a push for improved search performance on mobile devices.
It was in April of 2016 that Google introduced a new web crawler that would be able to determine a site’s mobile responsiveness. At the same time, they also revealed that mobile-friendliness would now be a ranking factor for their search results. Google decided that if your site doesn’t work well on mobile devices, it would be punished with a lower ranking on the site. A site that isn’t mobile friendly could get knocked from page one to page two of Google in a competitive field. With 90% of traffic being generated by the first page of results, this represents a significant blow to potential customer interactions.
Even worse than that, in many cases, is that Google can remove your website from mobile searches altogether. This can be a huge loss of local traffic, which in small businesses, is going to be a large percentage of actionable traffic. Imagine if someone was standing near your business and searching for it on their cell phone, yet instead of your website, your competitor from down the block came up in the search. This is the reality without a mobile-friendly website.
The marketplace for responsive websites is continuing to change. Last year, Google unveiled the AMP Project in an attempt to make web browsing faster. While it is currently only useful for news sites or other sites that publish a lot of content, it shows that Google is not done changing the marketplace for mobile websites.
Mobile websites and apps that were popular from 2010-2013, have fallen largely out of favor due to the popularity and simplicity of responsive websites. Responsive websites themselves continue to adapt to changing screens and browser demands. Web developers continue to make improvements so that the mobile web can continue to grow.
You can trust Beyond Private Label to keep up to date with the trends in the marketplace so you don’t have to. We can build a beautiful, mobile responsive website for your client. In fact, mobile responsiveness and search engine optimization (SEO) come standard with each website we build. BPL has adapted to each change in the mobile marketplace and will continue to do so to provide the very best websites to your clients every day.
For more information on our custom websites and mobile-friendly web design, contact us today.