With the shock of Google's Mobilegedon finally starting to sink in, more and more business owners are understanding the importance of making their websites responsive. Unfortunately, many of them are only focused on their search ranking and are not seeing the bigger picture. Making your website responsive is important, but just because your website 'responds' does not mean that your website is mobile friendly. A mobile friendly website has an optimized experience for its customers, making it easy for them to achieve their goals when viewing your website on any device.
Why is everyone still talking about mobile?
Google's Mobilegedon wasn't a random rule instituted to shake up the internet. It was a calculated reaction to the continued increase in mobile traffic. Internet traffic on mobile devices continues to overtake that of the desktop. The KCPB 2015 Internet Trends report has a wealth of statistics which show that this upward mobile trend is not slowing. This huge change in what devices users use to consume online content means that as a business owner, you need to ensure that users on all devices have a good experience browsing your website or store.
Optimizing information for mobile can be difficult, especially for bigger websites and e-commerce stores. There is often a lot of information on a page, and mobile displays have severely limited screen real estate. Finding the right balance for your content can be challenging. Below are 3 important questions to keep in mind during a responsive redesign. These questions will help you to determine what content is essential for the user and what content should be made less prominent or removed completely for smaller displays.
3 important questions to answer before starting your responsive redesign
1. Who are my customers?
Knowing the age, demographic, and computer savvy-ness of your customer base is going to directly impact the design choices that are made. Designing for Gen X is very different than designing for the Baby Boomer generation. One experience does not fit all, especially when dealing with different age groups using different devices.
2. What are the business goals for my website?
You must always keep your business goals at the forefront of your mind when redesigning your website or store. Whether your goal is to increase sales, leads, memberships, newsletter signups, etc., your website should be designed to help you achieve your specific business goals.
3. What are my customer's goals when visiting my website?
Are they trying to find information? buy a product or service? get a quote? Your website experience need to be optimized to help the user achieve their goals easily. If a user is unable to achieve their goal or gets frustrating when using your website, they will leave. This is especially important for mobile where screen size is limited and a non-intuitive or poorly built interface will quickly lead to frustration and drive your traffic away.
Share your answers and make your redesign a success!
Knowing what content to show prominently, what content to tuck away, and what content to remove completely is going to vary greatly from one website to another. This is why it is important to ask yourself these questions and to share your answers with your design team before you start your redesign. Having your designers understand your content and your customers is essential to creating a mobile friendly website optimized to help you achieve your business goals.
At Tragic Media we make sure our designers understand our client's business and marketing goals. We focus heavily on the user experience and how the site structure is going to break down to keep the content and browsing experience optimized for all device sizes. If your website or store is not mobile friendly, contact us today for a free site audit and a quote for a custom responsive redesign.
