More and more people spend increasing amounts of time surfing all types of content on mobile devices. In fact, close to 60% of all online traffic occurs on smartphones and tablets. Although it can be a cumbersome process, mobile optimization allows your website content to be adjusted so that your visitors that access your site from mobile devices can have a positive experience, customized to their device.
Why is it Important to Optimize your Website for Mobile?
Improve your User Experience
Ultimately, your main goal is for mobile users to have the same experience as if they were on their computers. The last thing you would want is negative feedback from a visitor because your website didn’t make a good impression. Those visitors will probably end up moving on to look for another attorney.
Your mobile audience expects you to provide them with a site that is accessible and fully functional. Your visitors and potential clients will need to be able to view your web pages with ease and click links without the need to zoom in. They also will need to easily navigate through your site through a smaller screen.
Without mobile optimization, your users may struggle to read or navigate through your site on their mobile devices.
Increase engagement to your website
Your website should be optimized to increase the likelihood of engaging with your visitors. You wouldn’t want to lose out on the 60% of mobile searches because your website isn’t mobile-friendly.
In addition to building engagement, you also need to make sure you’re keeping up with changes that Google makes in order to stay on top of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Which brings us to our next point.
You also want to regularly test your page speed to ensure that any new content or changes added doesn’t slow down your site. If you would like to learn more about your site’s speed and performance, you can use Google Page Speed Insights
Mobile-Friendly sites show up Higher in Search Results
Have you heard of mobile-first indexing? Google predominantly uses the mobile version of your website’s content for indexing and ranking. Historically, this only applied to desktop versions, but due to the increasing usage of mobile devices, Google now, from time to time, indexes pages with smartphone agents.
Mobile-first indexing was first established in July 2019 and enabled by default for all new websites.
To learn more about mobile-first indexing and best practices to follow, visit Mobile-first indexing best practices by Google Search Central.
By optimizing your website to be mobile-friendly, your SEO content will rank higher in search results when potential clients use your keywords and phrases when they are searching.
You’ll be more equipped as devices are always changing
Without a mobile-friendly site, visitors are 5 times more likely to leave.
With new devices always changing, having a mobile optimized website is vital. Many businesses already implemented mobile friendly websites and owners should understand how their site will display on a variety of devices and what steps that need to take to ensure that the users are getting the best experience and that their site is displaying well.
How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices
Mobile searches are different from desktop searches in several ways.
Take Advantage of AMPs
40% of consumers leave a page when it takes longer than three seconds to load.
Speed is an important factor when we measure bounce rates for mobile web pages. Google launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in order to ensure mobile web pages operate at their top performance and optimal speed. When you create your mobile site in AMP format, you’re able to get higher performance, higher engagement, flexibility in how you’d like to present your content, while maintaining and improving your KPIs.
AMP pages load almost instantly compared to a normal web page because AMP restricts HTML/CSS and JavaScript, which enables it to automatically render faster. Unlike normal web pages, AMP pages are automatically cached by Google AMP Cache for faster load times on Google search.
Have a Website Structure and Design that Works with Mobile Devices
Web design and structure plays a crucial role in how your website ranks. You want to ensure that your website will fit to the screen size and orientation of the device that your visitors are viewing from. In addition, images are necessary when you want to create engagement and attractive web content.
Optimize Your Images and Video Files
While it’s important to have high quality images, it’s also important that these images don’t take precedence when someone is viewing from a smaller screen. Although it takes more time and effort, be sure to optimize your images and/or video files before uploading them to your website.
Use Engageable Call-To-Action Features
Avoid making people memorize your number or having to zoom into the page to see your contact information. Implement features like a click-to-call button or link. You can also condense your menu options so that it’ll be clear for your visitors to get in contact with you and your firm. You might even want to consider having a clickable phone number or link on every page of your site.
You may also want to restructure your forms and consider your data fields wisely. Because your mobile visitors don’t have the benefit of a full size keyboard, you want to make sure they can access your forms easily and keep data entry to a minimum since they’ll be typing with their thumbs.
Looking for an Experienced Team of Web Developers?
There are different approaches you can make to make your website mobile-friendly and optimized for SEO, so when it comes to the structure or design of the site, you’ll want to work with an experienced web developer to find the right solution for you.
At Soulpepper Legal Marketing, we have helped law firms of varying sizes grow their business online, and we would love to help you too. Our team is composed of industry leading experts that are specialized in every area of digital marketing. Our digital marketing strategies are tailored to the Lawyers we work with so that each client gets the most our of their digital marketing efforts.
Give us a call today or complete this quiz to schedule a free legal marketing consultation. Let us show you what we can do to grow your law firm.
