Last month Google rolled out a new algorithm, a mobile friendly update that is expected to affect traffic to websites. Because of the new algorithm, known as “Mobilegeddon”, Google is indirectly penalizing websites that are not mobile responsive or mobile friendly by not placing them as high in their search ranking.
According to an internet trends report by Mary Meeker, Mobile Internet use is growing faster than Internet usage in general: There are 2.8 billion Internet users, up 8 percent from 2014, and 2.1 billion mobile Internet users, an increase of 23 percent.
I attended a 4-day training class on Mobile Web App Development. Without getting into too much detail about Javascript, media queries and pixels, I will say we learned some tips and some logic behind mobile responsive web design.
Once upon a time developers created two or three websites, all with similar content but each site included images and text sizes based on the size screen the website was viewed on. That takes a lot of design and development time. Now we use so many devices, which have such a wide variety of screen sizes. It is more efficient to build one website that can detect what size screen it is being viewed on and adjust accordingly…like magic!
Because many users are on their phones more often than they are on a laptop or desktop computer, web designers and developers must keep in mind the mobile user experience. After the site is initially built for mobile, more content can be added that will appear if the user is viewing a larger screen size. This extra content can still be available if using a mobile device, but it may need to be hidden behind the tap of a button (i.e. the “hamburger icon” or “open menu button” to pull up the site’s navigation). Other considerations include touch vs. mouse clicks and motion and gestures.
At AWG, we have built mobile responsive websites for a number of our member retailers. See the toddsbigstar.com example shown above. Notice how one page on the website changes its layout based on the size and orientation of the screen.
Does your website pass the mobile-friendly test?
Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ to find out.
