It’s time to go mobile with the Google latest update already rolled out a few week ago related to website mobile friendliness. Tablets & Smart phones usage is taking up every day creating the need of having a responsive or mobile friendly website. Responsive web design helps to float content across different devices and screen resolutions resulting in increased exposure to the website and also acts as a ranking signal as well as per Google’s latest update.
Why does it really matter?
Because mobile search is increasing and so is the traffic from mobile devices to your website. It is necessary you have a mobile friendly version of your website because:
- There are over 2.5 billion mobile broadband subscribers
- Almost 90% of the American adults have cell phones
- 50% of the American adults have smartphones
- 55% use their phones to go online
- An average of 1.4 hours is used for surfing the web using mobile phones by an American consumer
- 67% of the smart phone users use their phones to get news online
- Approx 70% of the mobile users will close a site if it takes more than 5 seconds to load
How do I check if my website is mobile friendly or not?
There are number of tools available to check whether your website is mobile friendly or not, but you should check out this tool offered by Google as it will also highlight to fix some areas of your website mobile version along with snapshots of your website on mobile devices. You might also be getting alerts in your website webmaster tools that do not meet the mobile friendliness requirements. You can also browse to mobile usability tools in webmaster tools and check for problems specific to particular pages of your website.
What options do I have to convert my website to a mobile friendly one?
- Fixed: website with a set width, requires horizontal scrolls. Do not look good in tablets and smart phones but are counted as mobile friendly.
- Fluid: websites using width in percentage, columns are relative to browser and one another allowing it to scale up and down smoothly
- Adaptive: targeted mostly towards specific device sizes, like tablets, mobiles and small monitors
- Responsive: supports server side mostly called RESS or dynamic serving. Such type first checks which type of device is being used on the back-end and then loads the website accordingly.
What are Frameworks and how to select the right Framework?
A framework is used to provide a set of common structure so that your developer or you do not have to rewrite the code. It simply helps to reuse the code provided.
While choosing the right frame work for your website you should keep the following in mind:
- Installation speed
- Options available for configuration of widgets and interfaces
- Easily understandable
- Support available from the provider
- Flexibility of Integrating with other systems
How many complete frameworks available?
There are many available but some of the most complete and widely used ones are:
- Twitter Bootstrap
- Skeleton
- Foundation
- Responsive Grid System
- Gumby
- The Goldilocks Approach
- Base
- Groundwork CSS
- Yaml
- HTML5 Boilerplate
- Tuktuk
- Kube
- Ground Work
- ResponsiveAeon
What are the advantages?
- Clean code
- Quick mock up process
- Easy solution to CSS problems
- Compatible with browser
- Resolves common problems with single procedure
What are the disadvantages?
- More code leftovers
- Mixes the presentation and content
- Learning is slow and you cannot learn it yourself
Should I really be using one of these frameworks for my website?
Essentially not, it all depends on the developer who will be taking the final assessment whether to use the framework or not. Frameworks are useful for many, so it is up to you whether to use them or not.
You have a reasonably new website and want it to be mobile friendly. What options do you have?
- Responsive version: The best option is to have a responsive version of your website as responsive design is styled towards the end user device; it is the best for improving engagement on mobile screens and looks very good. It is definitely an investment will surely pays off.
- Or have m.dot version: You can have a m.abcd.com version of your website which will open when your website is browsed from a mobile device. This version has some drawbacks which are poor user experience and managing two separate code base, every time you change content on your page has to be updated on both versions.
Now my website is mobile friendly, what benefit will I be getting?
- Mobile friendly website helps convert users into customers
- Better ranking in mobile search, especially for responsive designs as compared to m.dot
Conclusion
The number of mobile users are growing daily around the world and it is confirmed that they seek websites which are mobile friendly. Having a mobile friendly website is becoming a significant factor for your business in a number of ways whether it is making it strong as a brand, improving user experience, increasing sales, improving customer relations or much more as it is also a ranking signal for Google’s latest update. So it is the right time to adopt the change and have a mobile version of your website.
This Article is provided by TKDigitals – An inbound marketing firm focused on growing your online corporate identity with digital marketing and web development services.