
Millennials have a need for speed
Studies show that mobile users buy more?than people who browse through desktop computers. This is important because there are now 1.8 billion millennials on the planet making them the biggest demographic. And they are a mobile-first generation, using smartphones to research, compare, buy and review products or services and serve as a core to their daily lives. In the age of social media and messaging apps, it has never been easier to take a screen shot of a product, venue or even contact details and send to your friends for their opinion. The easier it is to capture and share this information in a perfect fit-to-screen frame, the more likely you are to close that sale. Speed is another critical factor. Customers are no longer as patient as they were in the days of dial-up internet. Research shows that 40 per cent of visitors will ditch a website that takes three seconds to load. You can’t afford to have resource-hungry multimedia slowly down page loading times as this could lead to potentially losing a sale. Keep your images sizes and graphics suitable to mobile, and limit your use of videos to allow your visitors to view your full mobile site rapidly.The user experience is critical
How many websites have you come across that aren’t mobile friendly over the past six months? It may be on the decline, but I?ve certainly come across a few. Think about those websites with reams of tiny hard-to-read text, un-clickable links and difficult-to-follow horizontal scrolling.Keep yourself in Google’s good books
In April 2015, Google made the decision to assess the mobile friendliness of websites and use it to influence mobile search rankings. Many websites were caught off-guard and those that did not have a mobile-friendly interface in place were penalised in their search results ranking. The good news is that you don’t have to fret about building an SEO friendly mobile site from scratch. Products such as GoDaddy’s Website Builder automatically creates a mobile friendly version of your website and allows you to make any adjustments from the control panel. By the end of 2016, there will be over 2 billion smartphone users in circulation and this number will only continue to grow into 2017. Catch up with last month’s article,?Logos to loading times ??Giving your website the professional touch.?Sign up to our newsletter to get the latest from Business Advice.