DW Tips

Google has given a deadline for preferential ranking for mobile friendly websites.  It was known that Google give  preferential ranking to sites that are responsive to different platforms, but now they have given notice that if your website isn’t mobile friendly by the 21^st April, your ranking could drop. And this could even be for your desktop version ranking. So if you want to maintain website use-ability and good rankings on Google Searches, you have to have a mobile friendly website.

Its kind of like when you really had to get broadband cos download speed became just impossible on dial-up. 

Google now not only gives preferential rankings to responsive websites - it is also telling mobile device users which sites will actually cater for their devices, before they click through to them.

More and more people view websites on mobiles and it can be 20% or more of your visitors. For some websites it is 50%. (You can check your Google Analytics account to see exactly how many).  To see how mobile visitors will view your site go to Google's
 Mobile-Friendly Test and enter your website URL.

In order to get the “mobile friendly” tag, you need to ensure your website doesn’t include the following:

• Software that cannot work on mobile devices (for example, Flash headers and animations do not work on Apple devices, etc).
• Text that cannot be read on smaller screens, unless a zoom function is used.
• A site width that requires smaller device users (e.g. smartphone users) to scroll horizontally (or zoom) in order to see the full site content.
• Links that are placed so closely together that the correct one cannot be easily tapped on a touch screen device.

Fortunately you don’t need to do a full upgrade to make your website look good on a  mobile phone .  We can offer you a mobile template instead that would be less costly than a full rebuild and allow mobile viewers to get a better impression of your company, not to mention being able to read your website easily.

The mobile template is a replication of your current website in a layout designed especially for mobiles so that it is easily readable and useable on mobile phones – bigger text, simplified navigation and bigger buttons, so users aren’t trying to use the tip of their fingernail to navigate your site.

We can design and build a mobile template for you and this template would display when your visitor is using a mobile phone to view your website.

Please feel free to contact us for a fuller report on your website’s performance and for any information about upgrading your website in any way.