Ok, I am going to guess that the majority of you own a tablet or a smartphone.
Many people utilize these two devices instead of a computer anymore.
You might use your smartphone to surf the web, check your e-mail, peruse thru your social media pages and everyone around you is doing exactly the same. So let me ask you, have you ever tried visiting a site from your smartphone and it fell short of your expectations by:
- Taking too long to load
- Requiring too much zooming in and out and scrolling to find what you were looking for
- Just being completely chaotic looking making the website unusable on your phone
Did you get frustrated, give up on that site and find an alternative? I’ll bet you did. And you are not alone:
- Most mobile visitors will abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 second to load. Three seconds is about how long it took you to read this sentence.
- Most mobile visitors will not return to a site if it did not load properly the first time around. So don’t rely on second chances or the “refresh” button.
- Many users will not recommend a company because of a poor mobile website. This means you aren’t just losing this one visitor, you are losing potential customers as well. Ouch.
And that is exactly what your customers (and potential customers) are doing if they have a similar experience while trying to access your website.
Of course, it’s not just how your site looks on YOUR phone. Your site needs to be accessible, look great and be easily usable on every single device on the market: desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, phablets, and every version of those!
To pull this off and survive the constant evolution of devices and screen sizes you need a fully responsive website, meaning the site will change dynamically and fluidly to accommodate the device screen being used to view the website. Sounds pretty nifty, right?
So, what is the verdict on your website? Go ahead, put on your customer goggles, pick up your phone (or tablet or phablet) and visit your company’s website right now. How would you rank your website?
