My Website is not mobile friendly and I don't care
Since last year April, Google already announced that all website have to be mobile friendly. What does that mean? A lot of business/website owner we spoke to, said that their website is still online and working so why do I need to change? It won't affect me as my business are not online, never mind, etc, etc....
Most of them would still be perceiving that their website is a cost center which does not make money for them or generates any sales at all. Little do they know that there are portions of their customer who found out about their products or services and contact information from their website. There are just no tracking on all inquiries to find out where they found you from. If we turn the table around and ask them since your website is a cost center, why not cut it off and not having it? Some of the answers are, No, we still need it to be there so people can find us or know our number. From the answer, we can only conclude that people do find you from search engine and eventually stumble upon your website and call you. So sales do comes from your website after all, just that the deal can only be closed via phone or visitation only. You can read more about one of my previous article on "Is your website a cost center or profit center?". It would give you some information on making it into your profit center.
So how does non-mobile friendly will affect you?
One of these changes was to reward websites that were mobile-friendly. Google has now taken that one step further by not only rewarding websites that are mobile-friendly, but punishing that that aren’t.
Here is the statement from Google:
Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact on our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high-quality search results that are optimized for their devices.
How does this affect your business? Well, if your website isn’t fully optimized for mobile devices then you will most likely see a drop in your search engine ranking if people are doing a Google search on a mobile phone. Please do understand that now, the usage of mobile phones to access the internet has already surpassed desktop computers.
If your ranking in search engine drop, then most properly customer will find and click into your competitor's website which is already mobile friendly rather than yours. Even if they do click into your website, which is non-mobile friendly, they would have difficulties reading and browsing for the content. Text in the non-mobile friendly website would be rendered very small on the mobile phone screen. If they pinch to enlarge the content, then they have to suffer to move left and right of the screen instead of just scrolling down. So in this process, they might leave out important information on your page or just leave.
In times where there are challenges to a business, management needs to make wise decision to turn everything into a possible money making vehicle. One of it is to transform your website which is cost center into a profit center because it is the cheapest sales and marketing person that work for you 24/7 and yet won't fuzz for a higher pay. Don't be penny wise pound foolish.
If you would want to find out if your website is mobile-friendly or not, simply head on to Google Mobile Friendly Test Tool and type in your website url.
You might also be interested to read my other article:
Is Your Website a Cost Center or Profit Center