By Adam Williams
If you use your smart phone or tablet for much Internet searching, by now you have experienced the new standard: websites that are everything you need them to be. The kind that are easy to see, easy to tap with your finger, streamlined and effective in guiding you to the information you want to find. By now, maybe you even have come to expect sites to be all those things.
You also know how those sites are so much different (better) than other websites, the ones that require squinting. The ones that require pinching-and-zooming with a finger and thumb, followed by aimless swipe-scrolling in hopes of finding what you want on the page.
Mobile-unfriendly sites are frustrating. They hurt business. Bottom line.
If this describes your company, we understand. We’ve been there, as individual users holding the mobile device, and as a company using a less-friendly website to reach out to the world.
No more. Palo Duro Hardwoods’ new website is as friendly as we hope you find all of us to be in person.
What Does “Mobile-Friendly” Mean?
Mobile-friendliness is about customer experience, whether the customer is viewing your website on a desktop computer, tablet or smart phone. A device-responsive design adapts its capabilities to the shape of the screen being used.
In fact, if you are sitting at a desktop to read this blog post, you can use your mouse to test what we mean. [If you’re on a mobile device, you can skip to the next section and read on.]
Click on the bottom-right corner of your browser window and drag it left, up, down … however you want to change the shape of your browser to simulate a tablet- or phone-shaped window. The photo size and the column width of the text should adapt, making viewing just as easy on your phone as on your desktop monitor.
3 Reasons (of Many) | Why it is Important to be Mobile-Friendly
Besides the reasons described above about customer experience, here are three facts that highlight why it’s important to have a mobile-friendly website for your company:
1. In 2015, Google announced a new search-rankings formula that emphasizes mobile-friendly websites, saying “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries, including the U.S.” That means a mobile-friendly website is much more likely to be found than an unfriendly site is when a customer searches online for hardwood flooring.
2. Mobile usage continues to increase, with the average time adults spend daily reaching 3 hours, 8 minutes in 2016 [Source: eMarketer]
3. 57% of users say they will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site [Source: Social Media Today]
How to Know if Your Website is Mobile-Friendly
To learn more about whether your company’s website is 21st century ready for smart phones and tablets, use Google’s free mobile-friendly test. Learn if your site’s text is too small to read, if the links are too close together to tap with a finger, and if your content is too wide for a mobile screen.
As for Palo Duro’s new site, we hope you’ll enjoy using it on whatever screen size and device you prefer. Feel free to leave us constructive feedback to help us continue to improve your experience with this site.
We won’t grumble. We’re friendly.
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