Early last year, a seismic event occurred in U.S. internet use. For the first time, people spent more time accessing the internet on mobile devices than on desktop computers.
Acting on this information and predictions of a continuing migration to mobile, Google announced that effective April 21, 2015, they would institute a new process for ranking search results based on their assessment of how well a site functions on mobile devices.
Now, sites that formerly ranked high on searches based on their overall content are in danger of falling precipitously in ranking if they don’t meet the criteria Google sets for mobile friendliness. While this ranking process only affects searches conducted on a mobile device—desktop and laptop searches will not be impacted—the fact that smartphones and tablets now represent the majority of use should be of concern to all enterprises that rely on the internet for a significant part of their business.
The message is simple: mobile devices are the future of e-commerce. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’ll get lost in the rankings. If you don’t have a mobile site, you risk disappearing from the bulk of searches altogether. Bottom line—you want to be where your customers are, and for most businesses, that’s on a mobile device.
Customers tell Google and other e-commerce researchers that they don’t want to shop on sites where they can’t use links and buttons without zooming or scrolling, where images are too small to see, or where navigation is difficult or confusing. This is part of a metric known as User Experience (UX), and Google’s move is designed to improve it for mobile users.
In announcing the changes to their search algorithms, Google said that they will have a “significant impact” on search results for mobile users. A week into the shift, preliminary studies show that the prediction may have been understated. Dozens of sites have fallen as much as 80% in the rankings while “mobile-friendly” ones have more than doubled their visibility.
Real-time bots pick up changes immediately, so the longer a business takes to upgrade, the farther it is likely to fall in the rankings. That raises the question of how many of your competitors will be upgraded in rankings and how many will fall. Are you in a position to capitalize on this change with a mobile-friendly site?
The Unleaded Group can help ensure your company site thrives in a mobile environment. We have an award-winning Responsive Design team that will make your mobile site user-friendly and content-rich to drive up its rankings. Our SEO and Content Management specialists will make sure your site drives revenue gains with our exclusive Agile Marketing techniques.
Why wait to take the lead in mobile e-commerce? The Unleaded Group is a global leader in high-performance e-commerce web development. Call the Unleaded Group toll-free today at 855.865.3233 and learn how Responsive Design can work for you. Or drop us an email and we’ll send you a free quote for designing a site that does the job you need.