Today, mobiles have become the primary source of browsing the internet for a lot of people. From buying groceries to checking for services like Cox cable and internet packages, and sharing status updates on social media, people use smartphones for almost every online activity. Statista claims that mobile internet traffic accounts for more than a total of 55%, and higher in Asia and Africa. So, make the UI and UX of your websites mobile-friendly.
Problems With Non-User-Friendly Web Designs
The recent rise in the number of mobile users has presented challenges for web designers and developers. In the past, before 2014, most websites were designed for desktop or laptop users. Design elements for the desktop version do not work smoothly on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Therefore, now the web developers have to cater to the needs of both types of visitors. Not preparing your websites for mobile visitors can cause the following problems:
Laggy and Delayed Loading
A website designed with a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) for only desktop screens does not fluidly load on mobile phones. The images and other visual elements can take a considerable time to load. Even when they fully load, the interface can feel choppy.
Other than lag and extended loading time, you may face the problem of delayed or no response on website buttons. Both these factors can be major turnoffs for your traffic. Such websites are not user-friendly for mobile users at all.
Webpage Abandonment
If a website takes a long time to load, a lot of users close the tab or go back to search results. This webpage abandonment can cause a lot of problems for your website. And if that happens too often, your website can continue to see a spike in traffic bounce. You can lose traffic and raise red flags for search engine algorithms.
Wasted Marketing Efforts
Driving traffic to your website requires a lot of digital marketing efforts. For starters, you could be adding valuable content that gets ranked on Google. Also, you could be running campaigns on social media to promote your site. Further, you may have ad campaigns running on search engines. Now imagine more than 50% of it going to waste just because your website does not have a mobile-friendly design. This could negatively affect your marketing budget and ROI.
Lost Leads
The visitors who visit your website to buy your products are your leads. And getting more leads is the whole point of marketing your products and services online. But websites with bad user experience and confusing interfaces for mobile users can result in those leads not making a purchase. You can consider an example where a user puts different products in the cart. Right before making the transaction, the web design issues with navigation frustrate the visitor and make them leave the cart. That’s a lost lead.
So, non-mobile-friendly web designs can create a domino effect causing more and more problems.
Benefits of Mobile User-Friendly Web Designs
A website design with UI and UX design that adjusts for a mobile visitor can solve all of the above problems. The visual elements and buttons will load smoothly without causing any trouble. Also, your bounce rate will decrease. Further, your marketing efforts won’t go to waste and yield more converted leads. Therefore, it is important to not miss out on the mobile-friendly aspect of your website whether you are a developer or a site owner.
The following are further advantages of user-friendly web designs for mobile traffic:
Search Engine Compliance
Search engines like Google and Bing decide on ranking factors based on algorithms. Where aspects like content marketing and link-building practices have a major share in ranking factors. Other things that count as well are your website’s health and user-friendliness. One easy way to check your website’s stats in these departments is to check the web address in PageSpeed Insights.
Two Web Design Approaches for Mobile-Friendliness
There are two major approaches to designing a website suitable for all users. They are creating Amp pages and responsive web designs. If you do not know the terms, amp pages are separately created web pages for mobile users and responsive designs (UI/UX) are the ones that adjust to all screen sizes.
Amp pages are barebone web pages hosted on Google’s server. So, they do load fast on mobile devices. But amp page creation is not encouraged anymore as it creates many other challenges. Therefore, a more advisable and future-ready web design approach is to go with responsive designs. Responsive UI/UX designs cater to all screen size requirements from traditional desktops to mobiles, and even wearables (in many cases).
