Is Your Website Mobile Friendly

Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

50% of all traffic now comes from mobile devices such as phones and tablets. How do you make sure your website is accessible to this huge user base?

What is Mobile Friendly?

You may have heard the term ‘mobile friendly’ thrown around but have never been sure what it meant or what it entailed. You may have even heard it be referred to as responsive design, adaptive design, a separate mobile site, or mobile first, but what do these all mean? Essentially what is meant is that a website is optimised for viewing on smaller screens such as mobile devices and tablet devices. This means your content – images, text, links, videos etc – are all easily and readily accessible to users viewing on mobile devices.

History of Websites on Mobile Devices

The advancements in mobile computing have been remarkable, especially within the past decade. This has had a major influence on how consumers work, communicate and browse the internet. The mobile web was slow to take off to begin with; custom mobile interfaces needed to be created that were capable of running on small devices, meaning only big companies had the resources to develop compatible websites. Reliable internet connections were another issue, speeds were low, signal coverage was intermittent and quite often you needed an expensive data plan to support it. The development of 3G and 4G networks has increased wireless internet speeds, making them comparative to that of a home network and allowing users to access more content on their mobile device.

In 2007 the Apple Iphone was launched which brought about a whole new platform for mobile internet and what we now know as ‘the smartphone’. Ever since then, manufacturers and service providers have focused on developing phones and apps with increasing functionality and that are more reliant on internet / wi-fi connectivity. Studies show that the average person spends upwards of 5 hours a day using their mobile phones. The ever growing mobile industry has led to a demand for new ‘mobile friendly’ and ‘mobile first’ software and web interfaces.

How Much Traffic is Now Mobile?

Website traffic from mobile devices has increased exponentially over the past 10 years. In 2009, less than 1% of internet searches were on mobile. In 2016 Google announced that mobile searches had exceeded those on desktop computers. Whilst they haven’t provided any recently updated figures, reports from various third parties have shown that over 50% of all traffic now comes from mobile users. Surprisingly traffic from tablets is still only at 4%. We would expect this to increase as tablets are now starting to rival laptops, especially with the release of hybrid notebook/tablet models boasting the functionality of both.

The Importance of Being Mobile Friendly

So how important is it for your website to be mobile friendly? Whether your website does or doesn’t cater for mobile user can have a big impact on a number of things –

  1. Having a mobile friendly website will essentially increase the amount of visits to your website. Remember that 50% of mobile users? If your website provides a bad experience for someone using a mobile device, they won’t stay around for too long.
  2. A website that is not optimized for mobile has the potential to run slowly. An estimated 29% of smartphone users will immediately navigate to another site if they can’t find the information or the site loads slowly.
  3. Google loves a mobile friendly website – Google now searches your website to see how responsive, and fast it is to load, favouring those who meet both of the above and ranking them higher.

How We Build Mobile Friendly Websites

At FreshOnline we build all of our websites to be mobile friendly. We have chosen WordPress for our CMS as its a constantly updated and well supported mobile friendly platform. We use the very latest responsive WordPress themes which optimises your content to display on desktop, tablet and mobile devices. We test your new website throughout the building process on a number of devices and screen resolutions to make sure it is fully compatible. We also optimise all images, content and configure plugins to ensure your website loads quickly. Why not check out any of our recent websites on your mobile to see what we mean.

What Next?

If you are wondering whether your website is mobile friendly, you can test your site here on this handy Google app.

If your current website needs updating, or you are planning a new website project, we would love to chat to you further about making sure its mobile friendly. You can find out more about our our website packages here: Or Contact us at hello@freshonline.net or call 01424 400090. to arrange a free consultation.

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