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January 24, 2019

Focusing on Mobile Phones: Websites Beginning to Build Primarily for Smartphone Users

Never in the history of humanity have human beings been able to so easily connect with one another. Thanks to modern advancements in technology, we are able to talk to someone from the other side of the world with just the click of a button and in less than a second. The internet has allowed humans a never been seen before amount of freedom in which to express themselves and communicate with a worldwide audience and one of the most popular ways in which to access the internet is via your smartphone.



In 2018, 52.2 percent of all worldwide web traffic was generated through smartphone devices. This number has risen from just 0.7% in 2009 and looks likely to reach 60% within the next few years. Internet search engines (primarily Google (News - Alert)) are used for a whole list of things from searching for food recipes to buying televisions. More than 1 billion people use the Google search engine every month whilst according to Google, 4 in 5 consumers use search engines in order to find local information with many of these users then going on to make a purchase once they have found the information they are looking for.

Smartphones are now akin to mini computers such is the technology available in 2019 – it is for this reason why the majority of web traffic has been primarily taken over by smartphone users. Smartphones are easy to carry and can often do everything that a PC can do, so it is no wonder that more and more internet search traffic is being generated by them.

As any web designer and SEO (search engine optimization) specialist will know, websites are built and designed so that they are perfectly optimized for all types of popular devices, from PCs to laptops and to tablets and smartphones. However, where it used to be standard practice for any website developer to build the site - first and foremost - for a PC user, it is now becoming the norm for a website to build for smartphone users in order to ensure that the most amount of users possible visiting their site get the absolute best user experience possible. Of course, this makes sense due to the ever increasing rise in search engine traffic being directed from smartphones. So, if you are a website designer or developer and you are still building a website primarily for PC users, you should consider changing your approach.

Mobile phone Traffic by Numbers

  • 73 billion: The estimated number of phone calls that were generated from mobile search in 2018.
  • 18% of smartphone searches led to a purchase within one day.
  • 76% of people who searched their mobile phones for something nearby visit a business within a day.
  • 30% of all mobile searches are related to location.

Building for Smartphones

“The majority of users coming to your site are likely to be using a mobile device,” state Google. Mobile has changed the world and almost everyone is equipped with a smartphone. In the past, if someone wanted to find out information they would have to visit their local library and read a book or ask a friend. Now, all the information in the world is at our finger tips thanks to mobile phones.

It is essential for a website to be mobile friendly in 2019. If your site is not friendly to smart phone users then there is every chance that not only will users visiting your site quickly leave and look elsewhere, but your rankings on Google could also drop. “A very decent chunk of our audience visit our website form their smartphones,” states Pierre Portelli the director of content at EsportsOnly.

“After studying SEO related trends, it is obvious that Google and other search engines are set to prioritise mobile friendly websites. If your site is not mobile friendly in 2019, Google will see this as a bad sign.”

Portelli’s statement is backed up by Google themselves. Google values mobile friendly websites highly so if it isn’t already, make sure that your website is attractive for those mobile phone visitors. If you are unsure how to do this, check out Google’s Mobile SEO Guide.

Decreasing Traffic by Not Optimising for Mobile Users

If you’re website is not substantially optimized for visitors from mobile devices, then your traffic will decrease – it’s as simple as that. It may not happen overnight but if you’re site is not as good for mobile users as it is for PC users then your traffic will begin to suffer.

All trends point towards a future that heavily revolves around both mobile users and digital marketing. If you want your website to make money, you must ensure that all of the consumers who are visiting your website are not disappointed. Based on the fact that more and more online consumers are searching for products and information using their smartphones, any website which is not optimizing for this audience will, in the long run, lose out on traffic and rankings to their competitors.  Your competitors will be doing their upmost to take care of their mobile phone user visitors, so you should be doing the same.



Author Bio

Iain Fenton is a freelance journalist from the UK. He writes about a range of topics and can currently be found in the sunny climate of Malta.



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