Google released a new algorithm that punishes your site if it isn’t mobile-friendly. Sure, a mobile site is a smart idea and you should have one. However, it is not urgent for most of you. Here are three reasons the hype is not going to match up the reality for most promotional products companies (as well as a few other companies).
1. Your site is already inadequate
Rather than focus on mobile, focus on your overall site. If your site is not very good today, “mobile enabling it” is not worthwhile. Statistics I’ve seen from many industry sites tell me that 90 percent of your traffic to your site comes from a desktop computer or tablet today, so focus on the 90 percent. (To be clear, Google counts tablets as mobile along with phones, but many sites operate well on a tablet despite not being mobile-friendly.)
2. Your SEO rank is already low
If your SEO (search engine optimization) rank is low, being mobile-friendly isn’t going to help much. Having a better site overall will improve your SEO more than a mobile site will. In fact, even Google admits this: “While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal—so even if a page with high-quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query.”
Millions of pages and hundreds of books talk about how to make your site more SEO friendly but the bottom line is: “Do your customers like using your site?” And if the answer is yes, it is likely going to be ranked well for SEO.
3. Your customers rarely search on mobile devices
Promotional products are not something that people usually contemplate while at a stoplight or in a coffee shop (unless you are in the business). So having a mobile site for a traditional promotional products company will affect less than 10 percent or your searches today unless you are atypical. Yes, this number will grow so you need to be improving mobile as you work on your future plans but it may not need to be a priority today. Given the condition of most industry sites today, mobile is probably the least most important feature suppliers and distributors should be focused on.
Google is right to be focused on mobile for a number of reasons since many industries have significant mobile traffic and growth of mobile traffic. Mobile is and/or should be a priority for these industries, but regardless of the industry you are in, the focus must be on the user and what the user experience is. If 90 percent of your users are using desktop devices, spending too much time on mobile in the short term is likely not a smart investment.
To see if your site is mobile friendly, click here.
Geiger CIO Dale Denham, MAS+ provides practical insights on how you can benefit from technology in no nonsense terms. Follow him on Twitter @GeigerCIO.
