If you need to make your existing website mobile friendly, you’re at the right place.
Website owners need to make sure they are prepared for the mobile world.
Let’s face it, people love mobile devices and the demand for smart phones and tablets is more popular than ever.
That being said, today we are going to look at..
- Why it’s important to have a mobile responsive website
- How to see if your website is mobile friendly.
- How to make your existing website mobile friendly for free.
OK, let’s begin by exploring the importance of a mobile friendly website and how it can impact your business as a website owner.
Need Help Improving Sales Conversions on Your Website?
Check Out Our Thrive Architect – They’re Amazing >>
Why Mobile Matters:
When you think of a Mobile Friendly Website, think of the word Responsive.
We want a responsive site because it enhances the user’s experience as they engage in your content and website features.
If you don’t have a responsive theme or responsive plugins, it’s very tedious to interact with and navigate a website using your mobile device.
With a responsive, mobile friendly site, everything is re-sized appropriately so that the content is easy to read.
A site that isn’t mobile friendly is very disorientating to the user. They have to scroll right/left/up/down, it’s an inefficient and exhausting experience.
User Experience Is Paramount:
As website owners, we need to be focused on the users experience with our websites at all times. And this will only happen for your mobile audience if your site is responsive.
Secondly, the numbers don’t lie.
More and more people are using smart phones and tablets these days. And more people are integrating them into the purchase process of online shopping.
The trend is that more people browse products using smart phones, while more people purchase products on their tablets.
Bottom line: Your online business will lose money if your site is not mobile friendly.
Mobile Friendly Websites Get More Traffic:
Lastly, if your website is mobile friendly, you can increase the amount of traffic to your website, build a larger opt-in emailing list, and increase exposure to your social profiles.
If you have 20% to 40% of your traffic coming in from mobile devices and you don’t have a mobile friendly website, you risk losing those users.
But if your site is mobile friendly, you can captivate the mobile audience by engaging them just as if they were using a desktop computer, with your beautiful, quality content, products and/or services.
If they don’t buy something from your site, that’s fine.
But if you have responsive plugins for your opt-in emailing service, you could still turn them into a new customer through your emailing (autoresponder) list.
This would allow you to maintain contact and interact with the customer through your email campaigns. Potentially you could drive the user back to your site at a later date.
Social Tip:
Don’t forget to put your social share buttons at the end of your posts or somewhere towards the bottom.
Then if the mobile site user likes your content and/or products, they can share your website via the social share buttons.
If your buttons are at the top, this detracts from the user experience because the user has to scroll back up to the top of the post in order to share your content.
What can I say, people are very lazy these days 🙂
But seriously, put your social share buttons at the bottom and you’ll increase your chances of getting your content shared by the various social platforms, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, G – Plus, etc. Socially shared content gets ranked better as well.
Check Your Website Is Mobile Friendly?
The easiest way to see if your site is mobile friendly is to go online using a mobile device and search your website name using Google.
If your site is mobile friendly, you’ll see in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) the words Mobile-friendly under the name of your website.
It will look like this photo below. Notice that that only 1 of the 3 sites is mobile friendly in this example.
The second way is to see if your website is mobile friendly is to go to your website using your laptop/desktop computer, minimize your browser, and see if you can re-size your website on a desktop.
As you re-size the browser larger and smaller, you’ll see your site content, headings, and photos re-size to fit the new window. If your website is mobile friendly, you’ll see how responsive your site is using this technique.
To clarify this, I have put in a short video (less than a minute) to demonstrate how this is done.
Now if your website is not mobile friendly, what can you do to update it and stay current in today’s market?
How To Make Your Existing Website Mobile Friendly:
One way to make your website mobile friendly would be to update your theme to a responsive theme.
Either by changing to a free theme that is responsive or by purchasing a new professional theme.
I know that this can be somewhat of a pain, but in my opinion, it can be worth it to give your site an updated look and a responsive feel to enhance your users experience.
Thrive offers economically priced themes but setting up the new theme could cost you some extra time and work. Your call.
The easiest way to turn your unresponsive website into a mobile friendly website would be to download a FREE mobile theme plugin.
You can try this plugin from WordPress – WPtouch Mobile Plugin. It’s been downloaded 6.5 million times and is rated 4 stars from 735 users.
I personally have never used it since my theme is responsive, but this would certainly be the most economical option.
Lastly, if you want to bring your mobile visitors back to your site on a laptop, you can use a plugin like Mobile Detection WP Plugin.
It costs $15 dollars but will allow you to send your mobile visitors a message as they are engaging in your content.
You could have your message be to sign up to your mailing list, or you could send them a message reminding them to come back and visit your site from a desktop.
Conclusion on Going Mobile:
The continued rising trend to use mobile devices in online shopping is a reality. Mainly because people love to use their smart phones or tablets on the go.
It makes the shopping process easy to compare goods and services when you’re out looking at stuff you want to buy.
And as with everything in our high-tech world, the technology is constantly improving to make the user experience more enjoyable.
It won’t be long before more people use their smart phones to buy goods online. As a website owner, you want to take advantage of these facts and make sure your website is mobile friendly.
Here’s My Top Recommended Training >>
It’s not that hard to test your site to see if it’s responsive. It’s also inexpensive to update your theme with a mobile theme plugin or buy changing to a responsive theme.
Now you know how to make your existing website mobile friendly on a budget, the next step is to do it. If you have any questions on this topic, please leave a comment below.
Great post and very informative, there are still some sites that can benefit from making their sites mobile.
Thanks
I simply couldn’t go away your web site prior to suggesting that I really loved the information you supply to your visitors? I’m gonna be back regularly in order to investigate and cross-check new posts. Great post on how to make your website mobile friendly as well.
Awesome Dion, thanks for the kind feedback. Come back anytime, we’re open 24/7.
Cheers,
Todd