Looking to make your website mobile friendly on a budget? It’s easy to update your website and inexpensive as well. Learn how it’s done right here.
Website owners are well advised to make sure they are prepared for the rise of the mobile world.
Let’s face it, people love their mobile devices and the demand for smart phones and tablets is more popular than ever. And although sales figures haven’t been historically good from mobile devices, this seems to be a changing trend.
According to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, during the Black Friday Holiday shopping season in 2014..
52% of all traffic to eCommerce sites came from mobile devices
32% of all sales to eCommerce sites came from mobile devices
And for Christmas Day 2014..
Online sales from mobile devices are up 8.3% in 2014 compared to 2013
34% of all sales on Christmas Day came from mobile devices which is an increase of 20.4% from 2013
57.1% of all traffic on Christmas Day came from mobile devices
That being said, today we are going to look at..
Why it’s important to have a mobile friendly website
How to see if your website is mobile friendly
How to make your website mobile friendly on a budget
OK, let’s begin by exploring the importance of a mobile friendly website and how it can impact your business as a website owner.
Why Is It Important To Have A Mobile Friendly Website?
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.
Example of a Responsive Website. See how the site consistently looks the same regardless of the device displaying the website.
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.
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.
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.
Stats provided from Google Analytics. Notice that almost 30% of my traffic comes from Mobile Devices
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 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. This could potentially drive the user back to your site at a latter date using their desktop or laptop computers.
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.
Put Your Social Share Buttons At The Bottom Of Your Content To Make Your Site More Mobile-Friendly
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.
How To See If 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 Website Mobile Friendly On A Budget?
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.
My Theme Shop offers economically priced themes at $35/theme. So not terrible pricey, but setting up the new theme could cost you some extra time and work. Your call.
Use this plugin to convert your unresponsive website them to a mobile friendly theme
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 emailing list, or you could send them a message reminding them to come back and visit your site from a desktop.
Conclusion
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.
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 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 and I’ll get back to you right away.
Thanks,
Todd
The post Make Your Website Mobile Friendly On A Budget – See How appeared first on Learn To Grow Wealth Online.