If your site is generally falling behind in technology and user experience you risk it becoming irrelevant, when evidence shows it’s the tool we rely on most heavily, the penultimate step in your prospects journey to a sale. If it suffers from two or more of the following things, it’s time to consider a whole new website.

1. Content and Design is Out of Date (see Part I)
2. Not Search Engine Friendly (see Part II)
3. Doesn’t Have any Interactive Elements (see Part III)
4. Can’t Update it Yourself (see Part IV)
5. Doesn’t Work on Mobile

Doesn’t Work on Mobile

People are looking at your website on a mobile device. Your site should at least work properly. I’ve seen many that are just mini versions of the full site, but I’ve seen some that don’t work at all, look completely broken.

The best mobile websites are not just scaled down versions of their big brothers, but redesigned for the medium. The images are often minimized or deleted, the navigation may take up the whole screen as a list, or made to look like navigating an app looks. It’s simplified.

Simple Makes Design More Important

I’m finding it really interesting how though the real estate for design is so small and that we can’t rely on images, we have to rely on good typography, colour and texture in a really clean look. Designing ‘simple’ is actually a lot harder than designing busy. It’s an exciting time!

Sniffers and Full Information vs Partial

Many mobile sites are built with ‘sniffers’ so they will automatically go to the mobile version if they detect a mobile device. I prefer it when sites give you the option of going to the full site – even if the option is at the bottom of the mobile home page. It just gives more options.

I’ve also seen some sites that don’t provide all the information that the full one does and I don’t really find that useful. Unless you’re a real utility site, like MailChimp, you should have everything on both the mobile and full site.

There are quick ways to get mobile friendly without redoing the entire website, but if you’re suffering from any of parts 1 – 4, you should consider redoing for all those reasons.

If you’re site doesn’t work on mobile devices your business will very quickly look outdated.

Your website is an extremely important marketing tool. You should be proud of it, excited by it, feel it’s relevant, know it works and able to change something quickly and easily.

If you’d like to discuss options for becoming mobile friendly, please contact myself or Tom.