In 2016, if your website is not mobile ready you need to change that today. Two main ways to make your site mobile is to either have a mobile sub-site or a responsive web design.
Why can’t I run my regular website on a mobile device?
It is possible for your regular online site to be ran on a Mobile Device but it is probably not a very good idea. The screen size of the device can dramatically affect the user experience and the overall look of your site.
User Experience Problems:
Your regular site will not be user friendly on a mobile device because everything will be too small. Mobile device users are using their fingers to navigate through your site.
- Small Print and Images – User can’t read the content on your site
- Small Buttons and Menu – User can’t navigate through your site because the buttons and navigation menu is too small to properly touch with their fingers.
Site Design Problems:
Not only can the user not properly use your site but it will also not look very good which can turn away many users.
Design Flaws:
Zoomed out to fit site on screen causing all above user experience problems
OR
Stays at size of desktop which cause only a portion to be on the screen creating scrolling vertically and horizontally
Mobile Sub-Site
A mobile sub-site is going to be an entirely separate site from your desktop site. It is usually characterized using “m.domain.com” or “mobile.domain.com”
Pros
Better User Experience – Since it is a separate domain, you can very easily customize the site for what a mobile user will be using your site for.
Faster Load Time – Since you can minimize the pages down for mobile, it will load faster than a responsive site.
Cons
Hurts Organic Search Traffic – Since this is a separate domain name Google can get confused and badly affect your organic search traffic.
Hurts Search Link Equity – Search link equity is the in-bound traffic to site from links. Any links shared from your mobile site hurts your primary sites search link equity since they are not added together.
Not Future Ready – There will be higher maintenance and expense to keep up another domain and there will be future reworking.
Responsive Web Design
Responsive web design is all done in the back-end code of your primary site to automatically re-size the site for mobile device users.
Pros
Better For SEO – Since there is only one domain name you do not have to worry about search result problems, complicated redirects, and lost link equity.
Future Ready – There will be no reworking the site to make it mobile since a responsive design is future ready.
Cons
Possible Slow Load – If you have a large site with large pages used on a desktop it will most likely load slow on a mobile device which can cause loss of users who do not want to wait.
Need Different User Experience – Sometimes the user experience on a desktop may not be the same user experience you would like to give on a mobile device. Most of the time a mobile user have different needs that a desktop user and you might want to tailor your site for those needs.
Chance of Error – There is a higher chance of errors since you need to have the proper code for it to render properly on a different screen size. Bad code can create a poor user experience.
Not sure if your site is mobile ready? Verify your site is mobile friendly here
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