A recent study conducted by Google has revealed that in the United States alone, over 25% of people access the Internet through mobile devices, not on desktop computers. In addition, 20% of Google searches are said to be performed on a mobile device.
With the growing emergence and adoption of low-priced mobile devices with Internet capabilities, it is widely expected that the trend will continue not just in the US, but in many parts of the world as well. As a result, many brands and businesses these days are optimising their websites for mobile devices in hopes of getting on the first page of Google and, therefore, landing more potential customers, subscribers, or followers.
Being in unfamiliar t
erritory, however, it can be quite easy for businesses to make certain mistakes that could affect the success of their respective mobile marketing campaigns. Fortunately, Rebecca Graves of Hubspot.com shared some practical tips on how to avoid such blunders and how to get better visibility and brand awareness by fulfilling the search needs of mobile users.
According to Rebecca, if you want to attract mobile users, you should test the mobile version of your site before you deploy it. You should never make the assumption that it will look okay just because your developers said it will. According to research, 61% of mobile users are likely to return to Google if they are unable to read the information on your site. Therefore, test your site and see how it will look like on various devices before you go live.
Rebecca also discourages businesses from having a separate mobile site. She said maintaining two sites—your original site and its mobile version—is time-consuming. In addition, it creates the possibility of having duplicate content for Google and other search engines to see. To avoid such problems, Rebecca suggest using a web design platform that has the ability to automatically determine the type of device where your site is being viewed on and show the appropriate version accordingly.
Google also shared its two cents’ worth on the issue and encouraged businesses to build a “responsive” site rather than one with any other possible smart phone or tablet-optimised configuration. According to the tech giant, a responsive site “serves the same HTML for one URL and uses CSS media queries to determine how the content is rendered on the client side.”
With a responsive site, business owners like you will be able to eliminate possible glitches in user-agent detection. In addition, it will help prevent redirect errors that can affect the usability of your website.
