Recently I visited the website of a major bank (I won’t name them here, though it’s tempting) on my phone. The site was huge. The homepage had a thousand things going on, all of which were tiny. I had to scroll left to right and back again to read every sentence. Popups took up so much screen real estate that I couldn’t click links.
Needless to say, I left the site in frustration. This was not the website of a small business struggling to stay afloat; it was a humongous corporation with plenty of resources for design and marketing. I concluded that they just don’t care, which is not the impression anyone wants to give.
Over half of the web traffic in the world is mobile. While the percentage may vary somewhat based on your customer base and target audience, you can’t afford to alienate that large a demographic. Therefore, you need a responsive site (one that adapts to different screen sizes for ease of use on all kinds of devices). Customer frustration leads to a high bounce rate, which negatively affects your search rankings. Google also pays attention to your mobile site. If you have similar content to someone with a better mobile site, google will tend to deliver that other site to users even if they’re not on mobile.
So, what should you do if you don’t have a responsive site?
- Start from scratch. If you don’t have a website at all yet, make sure you create one that is responsive! If you’re planning on using a CMS like WordPress or Hubspot, you’ll choose a theme or template for your site. All of the newest themes are responsive, so you’ll automatically have a site that adapts to different devices.
If you’re using a designer who isn’t planning to use a theme, make sure you choose one who understands how to make a site responsive. This basically comes down to considering how elements need to respond, using good design principles for text and graphics, and using CSS to set breakpoints and build a fluid layout grid based on proportions. It’s a good idea for designers to build for mobile first, since it’s easier to enlarge and spread out elements in a logical way than to scale down crowded pages and arrange the elements. To truly optimize for mobile, it’s also important to reduce page clutter, limit each page to one main goal, and optimize for load speed. - Dig in to your existing site. Assess your situation. If you worked with a designer you’re no longer in touch with or you can’t afford to pay, figure out where your site is hosted and how to access it. Over 40% of websites are WordPress sites, which is good news for you. If you have a WordPress site (even if it’s a wordpress.org site hosted elsewhere), you should be able to change the theme to one that is responsive fairly quickly and easily. Make notes about your site and back up before changing themes!
If you have a Wix site, you will have control over the design of the mobile site. While it isn’t as automatic and intuitive as WordPress, it is not too difficult for non-designers to figure out.
If your site is hosted somewhere that doesn’t have an intuitive visual editor, it might be worth your while to migrate it (carefully, after full back up and with technical assistance!) to a CMS you’re comfortable using. If you’re not comfortable doing any design work, please make a plan for hiring a designer. You cannot afford to lose over half of the people who visit your site.
Substance and Style 