So you have a dynamic company with a prodigious staff, stellar services and amazing products. Maybe you even have a decent website. Marvelous. But you’re probably losing loads of web traffic if you aren’t at least thinking about mobile design.

Our Cleveland website designers know what a fantastic feeling it is to finish a stunning, comprehensive website. But we also know a website is a living thing. It has to evolve as necessary to meet user needs and expectations.

A recent analysis by the Pew Research Center revealed that in 2015, two-thirds of Americans owned a smartphone. That’s nearly double the 35 percent who had one in 2011. For a huge swath of those users, that phone is the primary doorway to the online world.

In fact, 1 in 10 Americans have a smartphone, but don’t have broadband internet at home. Another 15 percent have smartphones and say their other options for internet connection are limited.

So if your website was built prior this so-called “mobile revolution,” you almost certainly need an update.

The whole notion of “going online” no longer in many cases means powering up the laptop or switching on the desktop monitor. This is especially true for:

• Younger adults;
• Minority populations;
• Lower-income households.

But even those who have desktop access often don’t prefer it or can’t always access it when they need information.

A 2014 comScore State of Retail report indicated 22 percent of U.S. men bought something on their smartphones that year, as did 18 percent of women. What’s more, network speed on mobile connections grew by 20 percent that year, while the number of smartphone users jumped by 10 percent. In just two years, 220 million people globally will have a smartphone.

Google reports that if a site isn’t smartphone-compatible, nearly 60 percent of visitors won’t recommend it. Another 40 percent of those surveyed said they would simply turn to a competitor.

And here’s another reason why mobile design is increasingly important:

Last summer, Google launched another of its infamous search engine algorithms to rank mobile-friendly websites far higher than those that don’t consider mobile users. There was concern the web presence of companies that hadn’t bothered to incorporate mobile design until then would be decimated. Some even coined it, “Mobilegeddon.”

It didn’t exactly happen that way. Some shrugged it off and said they’d seen no change at all. But keep in mind: Google and other search engines are constantly looking for ways to provide users with results that will best serve them. If you have a site that isn’t mobile-friendly, users will figure it out and so will the search engines. There are almost certainly going to be additional updates in the future, and the issue of easy mobile access is only going to matter more.

So even if you have a site that ranked well for years, without mobile-friendly consideration, it’s almost sure to drop. This is true even of web design for Cleveland small businesses. Some may have been able to scrape by without it until now.

But if you have a legitimate company with even a few employees, your customers need to be able to find you – wherever they are and whenever they need you. It’s not something you can neglect for a second longer.

Contact the Cleveland mobile design experts at Go Media by calling 216.939.0000 or contact us online.