If you've been putting off overhauling your website to make it mobile-friendly, you're not alone.
But, if you're making people zoom in and scroll sideways to get around your site on their iPhone, you're missing out on more traffic than you can afford to lose.
Over half of all internet traffic now comes from phones and tablets.
That means people now expect websites to be easy to navigate when they're using a phone or tablet. If your site isn't mobile-friendly, they leave and find one that is.
Worse yet, you're getting black marks against your name. Google notes websites that aren't mobile-friendly in their search results and if someone searches from a mobile device and your site doesn't pass muster, you simply won't be found.
Even searches on desktop computers are noting sites that don't cut the mobile mustard.
So, making your website mobile-friendly is no longer a choice but a commercial necessity. It's time to bite the bullet.
Is your site mobile-friendly?
Checking how your website visitors and Google see your site is easy.
Head over to Google's mobile-friendly test, enter your site's web address and hit 'analyze'.
What are your options for a mobile-friendly site?
Responsive websites
The best approach to making your site mobile-friendly is to make it responsive. A responsive website adapts its layout based on the size of screen it's displayed on.
On a large desktop computer screen it looks like a normal website. On a tablet or mobile phone, elements stack themselves one above the other, images increase in size to fit the width of the screen and text gets larger so it's easy to read.
The responsive approach is the one you should choose because
a) Google prefers it
b) you have one website and one set of content to maintain
Mobile-only websites
Your other option is to create a separate version of your site that's designed only to display on mobile devices.
Your site will analyse the size of the screen every visitor is using and present either the desktop or the mobile version of your site to suit them.
Don't do it. You'll have 2 versions of your site to maintain and you just have a business to run... you don't have time to keep 2 websites in sync.
Stop right there
If you have a website project on the go right now and the result isn't going to be mobile-friendly, stop and back away slowly because you've got the wrong web designer.
Make sure you ask the question and get the right answer before you commit to - or carry on with - any web project because the wrong answer will end up costing more than you'll want to afford.