Is a mobile friendly website necessary?
A responsive website which works on all device sizes is a must these days.
It is understandable that if you are building your own website you might not realise the need for a responsive website or understand how to build one, but if your website is being designed by a web agency or a freelance web designer, you should expect it to be responsive without it being offered as an optional extra
as some agencies do.
How many people use mobile phones to access websites?
To place some emphasis around this point, a report published in late 2021 by techjury.net revealed that:
- Over 80% of internet users use mobile devices to surf the web.
- 83% of mobile users expect a flawless experience whenever they visit a website with any mobile device.
- Up to 70 percent of web traffic comes from mobile devices.
- Google is responsible for 96% of search traffic coming from mobile.
Source: What Percentage of Internet Traffic Is Mobile in 2021?
Why does my website need to be mobile friendly?
Based on those numbers indicating that a huge and increasing number of people are accessing websites across the net on their mobiles, not having a mobile friendly website would be to their disadvantage and also to yours... Theirs because people who want to access and use your website will not be able to, and yours because you're likely to lose business as a result.
What will happen if my web page is not mobile friendly?
There is a real chance that if your website is not mobile friendly, it might not appear in search results at all. Google Search Console analyses each page it crawls before considering whether to index the page. The test results pages displayed below show that web pages are crawled as Googlebot smartphone
which suggests that priority for indexing a page is based on whether the page is mobile friendly.
You can see clearly from the screenshots below that one of the pages has been deemed by Google not to be mobile friendly, and will therefore not be indexed until the matter has been resolved.
Ideally we should be seeing results like this, indicating that Google has accepted the page for indexing.
Can my website be converted into a responsive website if it is not already?
Whether your website can be converted into responsive one if it is not already will depend on how it was built in the first place.
Web pages use HTML, CSS and Javascript to determine what content to display, and how to display it. Changes to some or all of the code base may be necessary, but in some cases in order to convert your pages into responsive web pages, it may be necessary to re-build them from the ground up.
Only after some initial inspection of your existing website will we be able to determine if a conversion to a responsive website is possible. The use of optimised images will also need to be considered.
I cover more about responsive websites in a separate article, so feel free to spend a few minutes reading through. If you feel I can help, get in touch!
In summary
So the advice is simple: Your web pages need to be mobile friendly!
Other Web Design Posts
- Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
- Why are websites slow?
- Selecting images for web pages
- Websites That Add Value
- Website Builders and Slow Websites
- The Importance of Page Speed
- Web Design Pricing Transparency
- Website Builders
- Responsive Websites
- Do I need a mobile friendly website?
- Web design case study - DHBathrooms
I'm Daron Harvey, founder of TargaWeb, specialising in AI chatbot implementation, website testing, auditing & consultancy. I am now in my 28th year of professional website production, testing and eCommerce best practices, and excited about the opportunities that AI chatbots and digital assistants can bring to ourselves, our customers, and our customer's customers.
