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If you haven’t already, ensuring your website is easy and engaging to use on a wide variety of mobile devices should be one of your top priorities to do before the end of 2018. With over half of all internet searches and surveys showing that nearly 60% of users won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site, any business that doesn’t have a mobile-friendly website will lose out in profits — big time.

What is mobile responsiveness?

Mobile responsive websites are ones that easily adapt to mobile devices (such as cell phones, tablets, and smaller mobile laptops). This means that they automatically detect which size screen the device has, and adjusts sizing of images, text, buttons, links, and more so that anyone on any device can have a great experience on the website.

How to Know If Your Website is Mobile Responsive

If you aren’t sure how to tell if your website is ready for all those mobile visitors, head on over to our other blog post to find out!

What if my website isn’t mobile responsive?

There are several key issues that would directly affect your business if your website isn’t already mobile-friendly.

1. Depletion of brand. Anyone who visits your website (whether they already know about your business or not) and doesn’t have a good experience while there on a mobile device will be a lot less likely to hire you, purchase from you, or refer you to others they know. This affects how they will see your brand from this point forward, and can have lingering long-term effects.
2. Poor customer retention. Many of the most successful businesses of any kind these days are utilizing their website to retain happy customers. If they can’t use your website to find information, get answers to questions, and more while on-the-go, they may switch to another company whose website is more mobile-friendly.
3. Loss of profits. Your bottom line depends on it! No matter where your website visitors come from (directly typing in the URL, linking to it from social media, or finding you in a Google search), if they are visiting on mobile and don’t purchase from you because of a negative experience, you lose money.

Design a Mobile Friendly Website Today!

liveBooks offers mobile-responsive, customizable website templates for creative professionals and businesses worldwide.

The best part? Our website designs are ready for search engines and look great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free here.

Within the last few months, Google has announced that it will be changing its algorithm to rank mobile-optimized websites higher than ones that aren’t as mobile-friendly. This will be taking effect next month, and if your business’ website isn’t prepared, you could see a significant drop in website traffic.

And this isn’t just a big issue for SEO: more than half of all web users today are browsing websites on mobile devices. This means your overall user experience for your online customers matters now more than ever before.

If you aren’t sure if your website is up to the proper standards, here’s how to check for mobile-responsiveness.

First: Understanding Mobile-Friendly Design

Have you ever stumbled across a website on your phone or tablet that looks like a tiny version of what it looks like on desktop? Many websites that are not mobile-friendly require users to “zoom in” (as if you were expanding an image on your phone) in order to read information or make the buttons appear big enough to click on with a finger.

In contrast, websites that are mobile-friendly or responsive have a unique design that fits well on smaller devices. The text will appear at an appropriate size, the buttons are big enough to select, and the navigation menu is clear and easy to use without you having to search for it.

Using Google’s Test

One of the easiest tools available out there is the Mobile-Friendly Test provided by Google. Simply enter your website’s URL and the test will be completed within a minute or two.

Then you’ll see “a screenshot of how the page looks to Google on a mobile device, as well as a list of any mobile usability problems that it finds.”

If your results say that it has no loading issues and is mobile-friendly, you’re good to go!

Or Try it For Yourself

Another way to test for mobile-responsiveness is to visit the website on your own mobile device(s).

Try loading your website on your iPhone or Android device and see how it functions. Can you explore the website easily? Does it load quickly? Is the text legible?

You might even double-check by borrowing phones or tablets from friends or family to see how your website appears on different devices and browsers.

What to Do if Your Website Isn’t Responsive

Whether you had less-than-stellar results on Google’s mobile test or you saw for yourself that your website is indeed not mobile-friendly, no need to panic!

Instead, work on tackling the problem at the source. Start your free trial on liveBooks today! liveBooks offers mobile-responsive, customizable website templates for creative professionals and businesses worldwide.

The best part? Our website designs are ready for search engines and look great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free here.