Blind Spot Detection for Websites

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time telling companies their site particularly on mobile is very slow. For most companies having a website that performs well on desktop is “table stakes” as they want their customers, partners, etc. to have an immersive experience with all they have to offer. On the other hand as much as we like to say things like “mobile first” and “responsive design” a strong mobile experience is often an afterthought particularly in the B2B world. 

Why should I care? is the mantra many of the companies I speak with offer. Loosely translated this is how they respond - “we have a site, we can market and transact, and even though it’s slow it works on mobile.”  

Here’s why any company should care. Website traffic from mobile phones and tablets surpassed 50% worldwide in 2016 and by most estimates is approaching 60% in 2019. Save sleep, we are really separated from our pocket supercomputer and mobile is the dominant way we consume content. Yet as I mentioned above most companies fail to deliver an adequate mobile experience. The average Bounce Rate for mobile sites is around 50% that means that a user who navigated to a site drops before the page fully loads on their device. So any marketing effort be it word of mouth, SEO or advertising is inherently inefficient as a site will likely lose 50% of its audience before they land on the first page of content.  For advertising, particularly search advertising this is magnified as you are likely to pay for a click to get to a website whether the page loads or not. So in essence companies on average are throwing away over 30% (60% traffic x 50% bounce rate) of the value spent on pay-per-click advertising.

Fortunately Google and others have a stake in making companies aware of this inefficiency and providing them with services and tools to improve their mobile experience. Google offers two tools that are invaluable and have become my go to reference point for companies not sure if they should care. What’s more no one with any sense is going to argue the results from the company that is indexing the Internet. 

The first is Google’s Page Speed Insights Test available at https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Among other things this test measures time it takes Google to Index a page and more importantly Time-to-Interactivity (e.g how long before you can do something with the page).  Most importantly, Google also gives the entire site an Index from 0 - 100 for page speed for both mobile and desktop. An index below 50 is “Slow”, 50-90 is “Average” and 90+ is “Fast.” Practically, speaking anything below 80 and you have significant cause for concern. This test can be a lot to consume and to Google’s credit it also offers ways to fix the key problems slowing a site down.

The other test from Google is Test My Site available at https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/testmysite

This test looks at similar things through the “Mobile First” lens and is a little bit simpler to understand as it does away with the index and just says you site is “Slow, Average, or Fast.” The test also allows you to benchmark against competition as well as see the impact a fast site will have on your business. From a practical standpoint the benchmarking tool can be the least useful as often times every company tested is slow. Over time this will change as not only will those companies that invest in a fast mobile experience have more efficient ad spend, but also will experience higher growth rates.

In essence Google is providing companies with a free Blind Spot detector for their website on mobile. Companies can keep driving blissfully unaware of their Blind Spots, or take advantage of Google’s blinking lights and course correct. However, I wouldn’t wait too long to use these tools or you company may find itself getting lapped.