Google is without a doubt the biggest and by far the most popular search engine. In this regard, Google wants visitors to enjoy searching for anything they want via their mobile devices. In essence, it wants websites to be responsive by utilizing the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code on a web page in order to determine what screen size the visitor is using, and adjust its output routinely.
Related Blog: Google Ranking Alert: Why You Need a Responsive Website Before It’s Too Late
Not only is Google suggesting that all businesses make their websites mobile-friendly, they will actually start penalizing websites that don’t follow their guidelines after April 2015. This penalization will affect your Google ranking, which will cause you to lose valuable potential leads and customers. Google marks search results as “mobile friendly” whenever a visitor visits the site from a mobile device. A responsive website design is one that uses images that automatically resize for mobile devices, which enables the user to get a better experience. Here are some of the reasons Google wants your websites to serve visitors based on the device they are using.
Popularity of mobile device internet users
It’s common knowledge that users of smart phones, iPads and Tablets have dominated the internet user market. Therefore, it’s prudent to design a website that serves this class of customers. Not all internet users use a desktop computer with the same size of monitor nowadays. Typically, when someone is searching the internet with a mobile device he or she is looking for quick information like directions, where to stay and contacts. This means that the user won’t like spending a lot of time surfing through confusing instructions and multiple clicks. Google wants responsive sites that will enable such users to access information quickly and with ease.
Crunch the numbers
Since about one quarter of the web searches done on major search engines like Google are being conducted on mobile devices, Google wants site owners to get on board. You don’t have to design a different website that is friendly with mobile device users. Instead, you can have a single site that is also mobile device friendly. This ensures that website and business owners derive efficiency from the whole experience since they do not have to go through all the hassle they used to before.
Readable websites
Responsive websites that are mobile device friendly will always make sure that size matters, for the sake of their phone or tablet users. Mobile users tend to leave a website immediately once they realize that they have to do a lot of left to right scrolling. The intention of Google is to help website owners rebrand their sites to avoid the presence of dormant sites on the web. With mobile friendly websites, users can enjoy browsing through content just as they would on a computer.
Keeping visitors on your site
As a website owner, your aim when designing and optimizing your website for the Google search engine is to keep visitors on your site. Ultimately, you want them to make a purchase or sign up with a certain link. Therefore, you have to ensure that your site is responsive because if they leave immediately, you will lose their potential business.
Overall, it is important to consider the fact that user experience is vital. Google values “user experience” very much and thus will penalize your website if it lacks that element. Google has a responsive site guide that is meant to help website owners understand how to design responsive websites and how the code works.
