"Mobile traffic is responsible for 52.21 percent of internet traffic — compared to 42.16 percent from the previous year."
The internet isn’t just moving mobile, it’s full-speed ahead on palm sized-devices. That’s right, internet usage has been mobile dominated since 2015. Sadly, for many businesses this means most of their customers are slipping through their hands.
"57% of internet users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile."
- Cognitive Load - Smaller screens mean smaller focus. Sites that don’t tailor their content first and foremost to their clients biggest needs probably won’t get users to engage at all. Ask yourself what matters most to my customers at this moment?
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Real-World Example: A upstart restaurant wants to feature it’s new deals on their homepage, and links to their new club membership, but most customers don’t know what their restaurant offers or why their food is special. Give your users what they want most and offer an easy way to view the menu and feature your major values above the fold. Put that customer loyalty and retention further down for the ones who will take the time to learn more. People will scroll if they like what the see to start.
- Structure: Adjusting Sizing for Mobile - Just like home-builders, web designers have tools in their built that are best-practices for mobile devices.
- Shutter less important links or details in Drawers or Tab Bars (for items that need visibility).
- Stack items that are side-by-side.
- Reduce header or footer sizes to allow more visibility on your smaller-sized screens.
- Fingers Matter - Make sure your buttons are clickable. That means not too small to click for big meaty man fingers or not too high to reach unless you have slenderman fingers.
Pro-Tip: Adjusting for mobile isn’t all design drawbacks… features like one-touch calling/texting/navigation are contextual actions that can only be done in cellular connected, GPS Tracked device.
Page Speed Matters More
"A single second delay in your website loading time can result in a 7% loss in conversion, and 40% of web users will abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load."
Many websites nowadays take longer than 8 seconds for a meaningful load. This means they are missing out on 40% or more of customers that actually click through to their website. Why does this happen?
Large Images - Many sites use images that are not optimized for mobile and use more data to be displayed. Minimize these files and incorporate mobile image styles.
Hefty Frameworks - Some sites use bloated frameworks or plugins to cut development costs that require additional information before meaningful information is shown.
Server Performance - Your server could be poor and struggling to send necessary resources. This can also happen if too many visitors are visiting your site or your server isn’t distributed where your major visitors are.
Outdated CMS - Sometimes updates get ignored and users can’t view outdated information in their browser.
Mobile Networks - It takes much longer for users to connect to your website if they are browsing the web over a 3G network. If it takes 8 seconds to load on a decent internet connection try to imagine how a person feels when they are connecting on their mobile device and it is taking them 15 or more seconds to load. No wonder bounce rates are so high.
If It’s Broke, Fix It
Why change now?
"17% of small businesses with a website do not even have mobile friendly websites."
Simply put, you will be better than 83% of your competitors, but as an added bonus you will rank higher in Google with an optimized site, your users will stay longer, and they will interact more. These effects have a measurable impact on your bottom line, so I suggest you ask whether now is the time think about making your site better for the little devices?