The Importance of Mobile-Friendly & Responsive Design

<Originally published on June 3rd, 2015 - have updated some number and republished today> A couple of weeks ago, Google announced that mobile search finally surpassed desktop search. Recognizing an obvious trend, Google announced that it is now ranking and promoting sites based on how "mobile friendly" they are. This means, at the very least, your website should be mobile friendly. Best case scenario? Your site employs "responsive design".

So what the heck is the difference between mobile friendly and responsive? According to Signal Fire, "Mobile friendly refers to a site that displays accurately between your desktop/laptop computer and a mobile device...While it will appear smaller on a phone and may not work perfectly on a touchscreen tablet, a mobile friendly website will be perfectly functional." Responsive design is very similar, however rather than a smaller design that works fine on any device, each page is designed three different ways: one for desktop, one for tablet and one for mobile, with the end result being a perfect experience no matter where viewed.

While mobile-friendly is fine for now, responsive design is more easily adapted to future technologies (yes, eventually we will all have to learn yet another technology!). As you can imagine, it takes work to make your current site mobile friendly, and a whole new site to incorporate responsive design, but the importance cannot be emphasized enough.

Google will rank a mobile-friendly or responsive site significantly higher than a website that only works on a desktop computer.

Still not convinced? The average American citizen surfs the web on their phone at least 2 hours and 42 minutes per day! That equates to 41 days each year! We can guarantee this trend is only moving upwards, so if you're not mobile friendly, it's time to jump on the band wagon.

Wondering if your wedding website is mobile friendly? Google has made a helpful tool for us all to test our sites: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

You can also Google your business name on your mobile device and you should see the "Mobile Friendly", see image below. For some awesome examples of websites employing responsive design, check out: http://www.fpmaine.com/, http://www.cairnevents.com/, http://www.thefritzfarm.com/. A great example of a mobile-friendly designis: http://www.loveandlobster.com/

Ready to take the plunge into updating your site? Tide Creative is here to help! Contact us today to schedule a free consultation!