Internet viewing trends
As regular readers of this column know, every Saturday morning, I go to the same local coffee shop to spend a couple of hours working “on” my business… not just “in” it. I do some writing, review email and social media metrics, plan out the upcoming week and record the past week’s Google Analytics.
Rarely do the Google Analytics surprise me… but this week they did. Of all the visitors to our website this past week, 24.8% of them came from a handheld device or tablet. That is, 1 in 4 visitors were not using a computer! It was the highest ever – up from an average of about 1 in 6 just the middle of last year – and the continuation of an ever-increasing trend.
The good news for us is that we wanted a mobile-friendly website and made the move to Responsive Web Design (RWD) many months ago, in anticipation of this trend. RWD is where your site changes size and layout in response to the type of device on which it’s being viewed. If you’re not sure what RWD is, here are some great examples: https://bit.ly/1HmnHqz
Have you redone your website? Are you concerned about potential clients exiting your site because it’s too small to read and too difficult to navigate on their iPhone? For us, that was not a risk worth taking… so we made the change. How about you?
Still not convinced?
And if the change in internet viewing habits isn’t enough to get you thinking about updating your website, consider this… I came across an article this morning: https://bit.ly/1GxA3yI. In a nutshell, it reports that starting this April 21st, Google is changing its algorithms (again!) so that they include “mobile-friendliness” as a factor in ranking. Uh-oh…
Bottom line: If you haven’t made the switch yet to a mobile-friendly website, it’s time to talk to your “web guy.” Spend a little time and a little money to make the conversion. Make sure that 100% of visitors to your website are welcomed with an experience that’s appropriate to the device they’re using. You’ll be glad you did.