Mobile is Mandatory: Why Desktop-Only Isn’t an Option

Having your site only available on desktop is no longer an option. Think of how often you search, research, and view sites on your mobile device – even when a desktop machine is present. Your customers do the same thing.

If your company site isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re missing out on a lot of potential customers.

Mobile is everywhere your customers are

92% of U.S. adults ages 35 – 54 are multi-channel or mobile only.¹ Not having a mobile-optimized site means you’re missing out on providing 92% of adults a good experience when visiting your site. That’s a huge percentage of the people making business decisions.

Mobile provides a better user experience and performance

61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing.² If your potential customers search for you and have a bad experience, they’re not likely to return. You’re then missing out on providing a modern, cohesive brand image.

90% of users move sequentially between devices to complete a task.³ If your company’s site doesn’t perform well on one of those devices, your potential customer is much less likely to consider you. In fact, Google states that “50% of people said that even if they like a business, they will use them less often if the website isn’t mobile-friendly.”²

You’re behind the competition without a mobile-optimized site

57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site.⁴ Not only is it unlikely they’ll return to your site, they also won’t recommend you to others. If word-of-mouth is a major player for you, having a mobile-optimized site is a necessity.

Google favors mobile

Since 2015, Google has prioritized sites that are mobile-friendly in their Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), even creating Accelerated Mobile Pages. Over half of all searches now take place on mobile devices.⁵ If you’re not mobile-optimized, you’re less likely to be at the top of the search results and more likely to be missed by potential customers.

Going Mobile

If you’re thinking about going mobile, there are a couple approaches. As you might have seen in our recent case studies, there’s one we’re favoring.

Responsive

Making your site responsive means taking the same web pages that load on desktop, and loading it on a mobile device. The elements that exist on the desktop site stack and scale to be viewable and interactive on a mobile device. While in theory, this seems like a straightforward approach, there is a major problem.

Loading the same desktop resources on a mobile device takes a long time – longer than most users want to wait. 77% of mobile sites today take 10+ seconds to load.⁶53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.⁶ Asking your users to wait for more than 3x the abandonment rate is not in your best interest.

Progressive Web Apps

In comparison, Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a hybrid of web and mobile technology. PWAs offer the performance benefits of a mobile application (near instantaneous loading time and offline mode) but are found in-browser, not in an app store.

PWAs use service workers to load and cache site assets to reduce users’ wait time. The less your users have to wait, the better. PWAs also offer other native app features like push notifications, adding an icon to the home screen, and persistent auto-login.

Here at PINT, we know optimizing your site for mobile is not always a simple task. We can help. Get in touch today to start the process!