Some businesses (especially restaurants) lose out because their websites aren’t updated for mobile users. People really do use mobile phones and tablets to browse your website.
I was searching for restaurants in Raleigh for my anniversary. I had my wife find 3 that she liked. I told her I’d pick one out of the three. She sent me links to their websites and I pulled them up on my phone. Out of the three, I chose this Italian restaurant.
Why? Because I liked the pescatarian menu, but mainly because they had a mobile website. I was able to see clearly what was on the menu—there was even pictures.
This wasn’t the case with the other two restaurants. I had to pinch, zoom and drag left and right making it frustrating to navigate to the menu, and when I got to the menu it was a PDF document that I had to download and view in another application outside of my browser—I hate that.
Why make the potential customer download another document (which I have to view in another application other than the app I’m currently on) just to view the menu; and even then I had to pinch and zoom—what a hassle.
On the other website, when I finally found the menu, it was in flash—a technology that mobile devices don’t really support—so in place of the menu was a default image indicating that flash wasn’t supported. This let me know that this site hadn’t been updated in at least a decade because modern websites don’t even use flash due to it’s poor indexing by search engines and the fact that it isn’t supported on tablets and smart phones.
Moral of the story:
Both restaurants lost out because their websites weren’t updated for mobile users. People really do use mobile phones and tablets to browse the Web, and so you better have a mobile website.
So, I made a reservation for the Italian restaurant and the dinner was great. The dessert was not what we expected—pretty much just some overpriced powered-donuts, but that’s another story. The bottom line was the Italian restaurant got our bucks because their website had a mobile version and it was easy to use.
So, that brings me to you.
Should your website have a mobile version?
Yes! As of April 22nd, 2015, Google’s mobile search algorithm ranks mobile friendly websites higher; this is purely a usability issue. Google cares about the experience of its users.
I would also encourage you to check your website stats. They should tell you how many people visit your website from a mobile device. If more than 10% of your traffic is visiting your site via phones and tablets, it’s important to consider going mobile.