Google rolled out changes on April 21, 2015 that could impact the mobile website traffic to your website.  Google sends traffic to websites from both desktop and mobile devices.  More and more of our clients customer visits and referrals now come from mobile devices. If your website design is not optimized for mobile devices you could see a decline in the number of referral visits Google sends to your website.  

Updating your website with a mobile (responsive) template will automatically size the website for mobile, tablet and desktop devices. In addition to good search ability, mobile websites have more user-friendly functionality than non-mobile sites. The images, menu, and links are larger and easier to click.  Both images and text scale remain viewable, while not losing any content or quality. 

Metrics have show that mobile searches are used in about half of all searches.  We can validate this with your own clients website statistics.

To prepare for this change there are a few options.   

• There are plug-in options that can be added to the websites that are not mobile compliant to make them mobile compatible.  This is a cheap (no cost) way to make the website act as if it’s mobile compliant.  It is a bit clunky.  But it will work in a pinch and should not be impacted by the Google changes. 
• Update your Website skin (design) with a newer, responsive template.  This is the better route to take and has better results in the long run.  

Most Red Mango Marketing (RMM) clients don’t have to worry as they have responsive or mobile website templates.  Those that don’t are in the process of updating to a newer, more modern responsive template, and a few have opted for the plugin updates for now.

Want to know if your website is mobile ready?  The easiest way is to test your URL via Google’s own tool. This tool will give you a report on mobile-friendliness and opportunities for improvement.

Another way to test is to put yourself in the position of your customers and visit your site on a mobile device.

Record your own experience.

What’s the load time? Do you have to pinch and zoom to access content? Is it difficult to click around? Does it make for a suboptimal experience?

Do you have a question regarding these changes?  Give us a call at 214-789-4967