Should small businesses get a mobile website?

The simple answer is “yes”.

Mobile website traffic has increased from 2% to 19% of total traffic in the last 2 years. And it’s growing fast. You only need to look around you and most people are glued to their phones. Whether it’s Googling the answer to a question in a heated debate with friends, searching for something they need to buy, finding directions using Google Maps, searching for a restaurant for the evening meal, or catching up with friends on Facebook.

So whatever your business, I’m sure you can imagine a scenario when a customer or potential customer would think of your business, or product or service, then reach for their phone to look you up. If you can, read on…

Here at Small Business Websites HQ we believe it’s never been more important for small businesses to present themselves well on a mobile device. Directing mobile users to a desktop version of a site is no longer good enough. Users get put off and will leave your website if the experience is clunky, if text and links are so small that they are hard to click and if there is far too much content on the page to read comfortably on a mobile screen.

What can you do about it?

The great news for small businesses is that it doesn’t have to be costly or time consuming. Many website companies will build what’s known as ‘responsive design’ into your website design from the beginning. Responsive design means that your website content is resized and reshaped to fit the screen of whatever device it’s being viewed on. Some of the content may be condensed, or even removed for the tablet and phone versions; a 3 column design may turn into a 1 column design; navigation may be reduced to keep only the 2 most important links.

Once these decisions have been made the template is set-up and when you update text on your main website the changes will filter through to your mobile site too because it’s working from the same database.

This site and blog is built using responsive design. To really understand what it is you can shrink the browser on your desktop and watch the content move about and re-size itself. Then look at the site on your phone and notice the differences and how what you see on the phone is simple, clear and easy to read.

All sites that we build are mobile-ready and include responsive design.

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