[Guest post by David Mayer from CSSChopper]
Are you aware of Google’s latest update which was effective from April 21, 2015? This update includes the ranking factor in terms of mobile search algorithm. So, if you run an online store, then it would be wondering for you to know that this mobile-friendly update announced by Google really influences a website’s visibility and makes it able to rank better over the search engines.
Is It Essential Your Magento Website Must Be Mobile-friendly!
Now, there might be the first question to ask yourself is; does the mobile-friendly approach need to adopted for the online stores or will it be really effective to generate the expected outcomes? The probability to find the correct answer for the same is quite high especially if you go through the Audience section for Mobile Overview report. Once you will navigate this report, a table would be received in the following format:
If you use Google Analytics to set up your business conversion goals, then you will be able to check the amount raised by your business through sales in form of the dollars. Otherwise, only the received traffic you will see here in the table.
It does not matter how many efforts and time you are putting to the designing part of a website to enhance its look & feel until it is optimized. If it is unable to work smoothly across smart mobile devices, then you are missing the most substantial portion which is the key to traffic.
Here Is The Graph Incorporated With Global Desktop & Mobile Web Users
You can see the traffic produced by mobile devices is potentially uplifting year by year and now it has left the desktop traffic behind. It is clearly defined by the above-mentioned image that after 2013, mobile traffic is getting high smoothly. The amount of organic traffic is substantially growing which is coming from the mobile devices. Hence, owning the mobile-friendly websites has become the necessity for the business owners, if they want to sustain their competitive position. Besides this, mobile-friendly sites are more competent to drive the traffic rather than desktop websites. Thus, the continuous efforts of the popular search engines have made the webmaster ready for giving priority to the mobile-friendly sites.
Percentage of Mobile, Desktop & Tablet Searches
Here is the image of search results in percentage that have been coming through desktop, tablet and mobile devices
Magento is one of demanding e-commerce platforms preferably used to build e-commerce sites. However, it brings sundry stunning features and advancements to develop a powerful site, but mobile-friendliness has become an indispensability these days to entice the prospective customers and attract the new visitors too. Now, the thing that needs to be discussed is; what if your Magento website is not optimized for mobile devices?
According to Google mobile friendly update, you will lose the utmost number of traffic as the huge number of people access the online stores via mobile devices. There is a way to overcome this complex situation, which is possible with tools. So, thanks to those tools that are helpful to convert the Magento site to mobile-friendly and make it optimized.
Let’s Delve Into The Tools That Help You Make Magento Website Mobile Optimized
Magento Theme Switcher
As we all know that people have different preferences to access the web. Some may go with iPhone for browsing the websites/online stores and other may prefer Android platform powered mobile devices or other smart hand-held devices to access the site. In this way, the possibility is that the Magento site you run might not be completely compatible with almost all sort of mobile platforms. This is why, Magento Theme Switcher come in the light, which is an extension.
This Magento extension changes the layout of your site automatically and transforms it to the browser and OS compatible. One of the best things with this prominent extension is that everyone is allowed to download the Magento Theme Switcher for free.
ShopGate
Do you want to build mobile store which truly augments the conversion rate of your business? If yes, then ShopGate will prove to be worthy solution. It’s an amazing tool integrated with the remarkable quality to launch the mobile site especially for tablets & smartphones. Additionally, this tool is lucrative to develop native apps for shopping which can be browsed on iPad, Android and iPhone powered devices.
Furthermore, ShopGate brings manifold mobile marketing related features including mobile coupons, push notifications and many more. It’s a free extension, but only for 14 days trial period. Well, if you think that if it is worthy for your business success, then avail it at only in $19/month.
Discounts & Promotions Extension
The most effective and proven approach to drive organic traffic at the online store is; give privilege to your visitors like seasonal sale offers, coupons and discounts. Though Magento provides multiple inbuilt promotional options to promote the products/services, but it also enables you to include additional custom options including daily offers, discount creation and some promotion to be deemed as the perfect. Doing all this is possible via Magento Discounts & Promotions extension.
To encourage the visitors & potential customers for taking an action in favor of your business, adding promotions to the e-store or site is the best technique. Taking benefits of Magento discounts and promotions extension is a good method that allows you to build limitless discounts & promotions. The interesting part of this extension is; it offers various alluring graphical labels as well as stickers to apply them on daily deal in order to make it customize in appearance. It comes at a cost of $119.00.
Official Zopim Live Chat
Well, it is important to have a candidate supported by your store especially if you run a brick and mortar store. The associated person addresses the queries and needs of the visitors. To do the same in the impeccable and excellent manner, you just install Live Chat & start letting your visitors communicate with you, spend time at your store and improve the engagement rate.
Official Zopim Live Chat, a simple to install Magento chat extension, needs a few seconds in the whole setup process. This tool helps not only the chat with the visitors, but also monitors your visitors, because they (visitors) surf all over the site. As a free to download extension, it additionally provides the options to monitor location, visitor history, etc.
Mobify
Mobify is an exclusive mobile shopping platform which can be incorporated easily into the existing Magento website/web store. After integrating successfully, it extends the e-store capabilities to generate the desired solutions that are mobile optimized. The produced solution is like a web app which can adapt to any smartphone and tablet comprised with different OS. Even though your web store is embedded with mobile device capabilities like payments, touch security, NFC, and even more, Mobify undoubtedly creates the seamless shopping experience with almost all mobile devices and aids you to leverage the competence regarding mobile touchpoints.
Wrapping Up:
Do you run a Magento website, which is not mobile optimized? If yes, then it’s the appropriate time to turn it into mobile-friendly to prevent it from being penalized by Google. The real-time update of Google has been effective from 21 April 2015, so don’t waste your time as without mobile-optimized store, you must be losing thousands of customers day by day. Fortunately, Magento caters an array of extensions/tools, where some are paid or other are free of cost.
Through this post, we will be aware of 5 fruitful Magento tools that are well-noted and used globally by the Magento users to make the site prepared for targeting the mobile users. Hopefully, 5 listed extensions in this post will help you search the suitable one which optimizes your e-store sales, once implemented completely.
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