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- Topics:
- Website Design & Development
According to Global Index, 80% of internet users worldwide own a smartphone. Now, take a moment to digest that. We still have massive amounts of people living in poverty in the world, in areas with no clean water or accessible healthcare, and yet the number of mobile connections globally has surpassed the world’s population.
Technology is changing at an unprecedented speed, which makes the lives of small business owners feel like an endless rollercoaster ride – right when you think you’re on top of things, it becomes yesterday’s news and you’re right back at the beginning of the learning curve again!
Smartphones have been around since 1992, but only became widely adopted in the early 2000’s. From the original IBM Simon, to Palm and Blackberry, to iPhones and many others available in the market today, nobody could precisely predict when mobile devices would take over desktops and ultimately rule the marketing world.
That day has arrived. In all fairness, we should have seen it coming for the past decade. Most of us, here in the U.S., have owned a smartphone for a while and use it several times per day – so why should we think our customers are doing anything different?
If you are still running a “dinosaur” website that isn’t mobile friendly, you should make the transition to a responsive platform now. Seriously, now. Beginning on April 21, when someone’s searching on a mobile device, Google will serve up sites that are mobile friendly first. According to HubSpot, Google’s mobile ranking factors will not only label your site as mobile-friendly (or not), but will also use that to determine if your site should rank higher in the search results. In other words, Google will either reward or penalize your website based on the mobile experience it offers visitors.
In other words – your SEO might be good, but if your site is not providing a good mobile experience to mobile users, or to most people, your site’s current SERP (search engine results pages) ranking will be significantly impacted on mobile search.
The truth of the matter is, having a mobile friendly website is no longer a choice; it’s a requirement if you wish to do business online. Now is the time to make the transition and officially focus your marketing strategy on mobile users.
