Is your website “Mobile-Ready”?
Here’s how to find out…
By Brett Lloyd Abbott, MYM Austin Inc.
Late-night pizza-eating “twenty-somethings” (and other assorted stereo-typical techno-geeks) have been indirectly determining what you and I must do with our websites for years. It hardly seems fair, since they’re not exactly our “ideal target client.” Nonetheless, the latest website programming technologies and languages that geeks played with yesterday and the day before is what the rest of us will need to start using today and tomorrow.
They’re the ones who first came up with “hypertext markup language” (a.k.a. HTML), and then sold us on the Siren’s beauty of (the now ill-fated and ridiculously expensive) FLASH technology. They invented WordPress and Joomla! and Drupal, so that regular people like you and me could try our hand at website programming. Then they created “HTML 5“, so that we could all have the sexy style of “flash” without all the negatives that came with it.
Then a few years ago, the invention of “smart phones” caused them to come up with “mobile friendly” technology, which wasn’t exactly the answer, but it was a step in the right direction. Which leads us to my marketing insight for you today.
Experts are predicting that sometime in the next 12 months,
“Mobile Search” will surpass “Desktop Search” forever. 
WHY DOES THIS MATTER? Because if more than half of all the people in the world are soon going to be searching on mobile devices, then we need to make sure your website is ready for them.
And once again, we’ve been saved by the techno-geeks. Rather than just “mobile friendly” (which meant “you could more or less see it on a mobile device”) the geeks have created an entirely new “mobile ready” technology. Often referred to as “Responsive Web Design,” it basically means “whatever you could experience on your desktop, you can now experience the same thing on a mobile device.”
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
Whether the website visitor is on a desktop, a mobile phone, or a tablet (iPad, etc.), the website should look and function the same.
Here’s How to Determine If YOUR Website Is “Mobile Ready”…
Look at your website on a smart phone. (Borrow one if you have to.) Is the menu easy to find? Are the photos and videos properly centered? Is everything easy to read? If so, then congratulations, it looks like you are “mobile ready.” (If you’re not sure, you might want to check out one of my clients “mobile ready” sites here, or check out my mobile-ready MYM Austin website. It too was recently upgraded to “mobile ready.”)
If your website is NOT “mobile ready,” then you should be making plans to get that taken care of in the months ahead. And yes, of course, MYM Austin offers a service to convert your website to “mobile ready.” But this isn’t intended to be a blatant sales pitch. This is a stern advisement that you should be making plans to convert/upgrade your website to “mobile ready” very soon, no matter who you hire to do the work. (Otherwise, 50% of your website visitors may start going to your competitor! And we don’t want that.)
To your success,
Brett Abbott
Leave a Reply