Your potential customers have changed. At every opportunity, what are they doing? They’re looking at their cellphone. They’re looking up contact information, making an online dinner reservation, shopping and learning. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, if the user can’t navigate your site quickly and easily, they are far less likely to stay on your site, sign up for your mailing list or make a purchase. If you want to stay relevant, you must make your website mobile-friendly.
Is there a simple way to update an existing static site to be responsive?
Let’s start with this question: What is the biggest difference between a desktop computer and a smartphone?
Screen size is the biggest difference. A multi-column layout viewed on the monitor of a desktop computer is easy to read. But what happens when that same content is reduced to the width of a mobile device? It becomes unreadable unless you constantly zoom in and out and scroll left and right. This is not a good user experience.
Computing power and network speed are also lower on most mobile devices. Browsers take longer to render pages, and mobile networks can be 4x slower than the wired network of a desktop
Understanding these differences is imperative to building a site that loads quickly regardless of the device being used.
How to upgrade your website to be mobile-friendly
Unfortunately, there is no simple trick for converting your website to be mobile-friendly. In most cases, to go from a fixed layout to one that is mobile-friendly requires building a new site. However, this does not necessarily mean starting from scratch. If the content of your website is still relevant and optimized for search, then your developer can reuse the text. They may also be able to reuse images, especially if you have high quality originals.
Why is it important that your site be mobile-friendly?
With more than 50% of all web traffic these days coming from smartphones and tablets, and that number expected to grow, you are losing customers if your site is not mobile-friendly. In fact, way back in 2015 Google began penalizing websites that were not mobile-friendly. Your customers are using mobile devices. If you want to build trust, be competitive, and make it easy for people to do business with you, then your site must be mobile-friendly.
Quick and dirty
There are businesses that offer one-click solutions to converting a static website to mobile-friendly, but there are no quick solutions that we can recommend. For example, some services create a separate, dedicated mobile website. When it detects that a site visitor is on a mobile device, the alternate mobile site is delivered. This device detection approach is unreliable, and it often requires having two websites that present the same information but need to be updated separately.
Your website is your connection to your customers when they are not with you. It is also your 24/7 salesperson. In many cases, it will be the first impression you give potential customers. Give them the confidence that you care about their experience, their time and security. Give them a quality, mobile-friendly website.
We can make your website mobile-friendly
If your website is not mobile-friendly, give us a call at (518) 392-0846, email [email protected], or fill out our online form. We can discuss the smoothest path to giving you a new, mobile-friendly website. You can also learn about our conversion services or see related articles: What is Responsive Design? | What Does It Look Like? | What is Mobile First?