Whether your website is mobile friendly (works well on a mobile device) or not, has a huge impact on how your website performs in Google Search. Since April 2015, it has been widely known that when users search from a mobile device, websites that are not mobile friendly have been lowered in Google’s SERP.
Starting 21 April 2015, Google Search will be expanding its 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 Google Search results. Users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results optimised for their devices.
How can I test my website to see if it’s mobile friendly?
It will come as no great surprise that “there’s an app for that”. Head to g.co/mobilefriendly and pop your website URL into the box (go ahead and try it now, we’ll open that link in a new window for you).
Hit the “Run Test” button and watch set about testing your site!
Once run, you’ll have your results. Hopefully, you’ll have it telling you that your “Page is mobile-friendly”.
There can also be additional actions to take, and of course – don’t confuse ‘mobile-friendly’ with responsive design that delivers content that’s different based on the users device.
As an example of this, let’s take a look at our contact page. In a browser view (on a desktop or laptop), you can see that we reference the fact that the visitor in using a browser , we have a table of contact details, the six social media buttons, the ‘official’ Google Map and then the Google Map of our other centres.
When we compare that to how it looks on a mobile device, we start to see some significant differences. Differences that we’ve implemented because of the user experience (UX).
Thinking about the customer that is on this page (using a mobile device), we started to deconstruct the page to make it easier…more usable.
We changed the wording of the call to action at the top (“Click this button right from your smart device”), we got rid of the table. We got rid of the main Google Map AND the one showing multiple locations.
It’s nice to have, but doesn’t give a great experience. Instead, we replace it with an extra three buttons which we add to the six that were there before – replacing the table and Google Maps.
These clickable options give a one-touch way of reaching us – which if, of course, what the visitor wants to do (why else would they be on the ‘Contact’ page?).
So, eliminating anything that could be a distraction for our visitors means that we’re able to streamline the page, give a better experience and ultimately convert more.
This, I would suggest, is really mobile-friendly. This is user-first.
So, whether you’re simply making sure that your page loads well on a mobile device, or you’re changing the entire page based on the device itself – you absolutely must be ensuring that you’re thinking mobile-first over browser (as this is almost certainly where your visitors are going to be coming from – you can, of course, check this using Google Analytics).
Have you done something cool with your website? Are you excited about how yours looks on a mobile device – leave a link in the comments below and we’ll go check it out!
