That’s the very principle behind mobile optimization, which ensures that a website offers a consistent experience from device to device. Here are a few signs to look for to determine whether your site is performing as expected on mobile devices.

Image Quality

Along with text, images ensure a dynamic web browsing experience. When a website is not mobile optimized, images that appear fine on a desktop may be of low quality on mobile devices. You may also find that image links are broken, which can be a frustrating experience for users.

Issues With Text

Text size is another important factor to consider. Text that is too small may be impossible to read on a mobile device, which can result in users clicking away to another site. Mobile optimization ensures that text is easy to read on all devices, regardless of their screen size.

Loading Speeds

Websites must load within three seconds, or you run the risk of losing a potential customer. When websites aren’t correctly optimized for mobile viewing, extended loading speeds can become a real issue. Users are accustomed to swift loading speeds these days, which means they aren’t likely to wait around when a website isn’t functioning correctly on a mobile device.

Scrolling Left or Right

Text and images must also fit reasonably within the screen of the mobile device. Needing to scroll to the left or right to continue reading text will probably turn off users. It may also prevent them from accessing the information they need to take the desired action, such as contacting your business or purchasing a product.

Web Design Services You Can Trust

For decades, SonicSEO.com has provided web design services to clients all over North America. We know that mobile website design is key to reaching as many members of your target audience as possible, so we make certain that our client’s sites look amazing on all devices, from desktops to smartphones and notepads. Call (505) 821-2000 today or contact us to learn more.

While beneficial, traditional app development is extremely complex. Low-code app development methods aim to make the process easier and more efficient, which benefits business owners. It can also reduce the cost for app development when compared to traditional coding. But is the method really right for you?

How Low-Code App Development Works

Apps are traditionally constructed via hand-coded computer programming, which requires high levels of experience and knowledge to achieve. Conversely, low-code development entails a visual user interface to build app elements.

Instead of writing lines and lines of code, and experiencing a major operational error if code is written incorrectly, low-code development allows to build separate elements independent of one another, which makes it easier to deal with any issues or errors.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The biggest advantage of this app development process is how quickly an app can be built and launched. Because no special experience or training is required, many people can make use of the low-code method. Additionally, apps can be scaled up quickly should the need arise.

Of course, low-code app development also has its critics. There are questions about how effective the end app will actually be, depending on its purpose. There are worries that low-code apps may fall short of their duties when undertaking more complex actions.

Security is another issue. If an app is used to input customer information, such as credit card info, high-level security is a must to prevent breaches. Low-code apps may not fully comply with crucial security measures, which leaves customers vulnerable.

Finally, low-code app development may not be able to provide the features you demand. Customization typically requires hand-coding to ensure proper function and user satisfaction. While very basic apps may be able to get away with low-coding, more advanced features are not available when using simplified techniques.

There are other methods of quickly and efficiently developing an app that gets real results. Our team of skilled developers at SonicSEO.com use a website to app method that uses existing elements to build your mobile application. We can also add custom features to ensure your app meets and exceeds user expectations.

No matter which method you choose, you can rest assured that your app will be highly secure and functional. We’re always happy to discuss your marketing strategy, so reach out to us today.

Mobile use statistics from 2018 and forecasts for 2019 can help you understand how to tweak your mobile presence for improved conversion rates.

A Refresher on Internet Statistic Lingo

Just to be clear before we dig into facts and figures, here’s how we define our terms:

User/Viewer: a human behind the mobile device actually looking at your website, ad, native app, etc.

Conversion: the process by which a viewer becomes an actual lead or customer. What constitutes a conversion is determined by each business. For example, some companies may consider the completion of a subscription form or download of trial software as a conversion while others may require the completed sale of a product/service.

App: an application that is downloaded and installed onto a mobile device. An app can pull data from the internet (and other apps when users grant permission). A (mobile) website, on the other hand, is not downloaded but is accessed through a mobile browser like Safari or Chrome.

Bases covered. Moving on…

Key Mobile Usage Insights

Every year, HostingFacts updates its list of internet, ecommerce, mobile and social media facts and statistics. They look at hundreds of data points and bullet a number of neat-to-knows, but some nuggets are particularly useful for online marketers.

Key insights from their InternetStats & Facts 2019 include:

• By 2020, 45% of all ecommerce will be mobile commerce…by 2021 that is expected to jump to 67%
• Although the majority of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, users spend more time on websites they access on desktops
• Most time spent on mobile devices is spent on apps
• Engagement on apps is significantly higher (like, 300% higher) than on mobile websites
• Mobile users do not like ads and are increasingly using mobile ad blockers
• 82% of mobile users use their device to research potential purchases in a brick-and-mortar store

Clearly, mobile device usage for everything, including shopping, is trending up. That’s easy to see. What is less obvious is how to translate these facts and stats into actionable items to improve your online visibility and conversion rate.

Takeaways: How to Improve Your Mobile Conversions

Some of the takeaways from 2018 facts and 2019 forecasts are obvious, like:

• You need a mobile presence

If your website looks great on a desktop but loads slowly or renders too big to be easily readable on a mobile device, mobile users won’t waste their time waiting or resizing…and that will increase your bounce rate (that’s no good). So, you absolutely must have a mobile website.

One word of caution, though: do not upgrade or enhance your mobile site at the expense of desktop viewing. Remember, internet users are still spending more time on sites viewed on desktops, so the full-size experience still matters, too.

• Consider developing a mobile app

An app (or progressive web app) is a significant investment, but for ecommerce-driven businesses, it may be worth the money because of the increase in user engagement, which enhances conversion potential.

More nuanced online marketing advice from these facts and stats include:

• Thoughtfully define what a conversion is for your business

Because mobile users may be using their devices for purchases made offline, you need to know how to measure your mobile online marketing efforts. Defining a conversion and how to measure conversion rate will help you know how and where to spend your online marketing budget so that you do not choke mobile marketing and, in turn, tank your overall sales.

• Do not neglect your SEO

Organic search results are still going to be essential to getting your website found when users are researching potential purchases or getting your native app found when they’re browsing app stores. Effective SEO for mobile usage must incorporate voice-activated search trends as well as cater to search engines’ mobile-first preferences, like data structuring and AMP. 

Your SEO should also involve carefully crafted content—text, images and other media—that informs, entertains and, most importantly, compels viewers to fully convert to leads or consumers.

• Carefully evaluate mobile ad spend

Mobile ad spend is expected to significantly increase. However, given mobile users’ dislike of ads and ad-blocking capabilities, dumping a ton of money into mobile ads may not deliver the visibility increase you’re looking for. This is not to say that you should not increase your mobile ad spend—only that you carefully select the platforms and continuously monitor your mobile ads’ performance to maximize your ROI.

SonicSEO.com clients do not need to stress over 2019 mobile usage trends. Your online presence is already optimized for mobile viewing and conversion.

But, if you’re left trying to translate stats, facts and forecasts into an executable online marketing strategy on your own, get expert help. Contact SonicSEO.com for comprehensive digital marketing geared to boost your visibility and performance in the mobile-first internet.

To Recap

Historically, Google’s algorithm indexed a full-size desktop website first. But, the mobile-first initiative is acting like an algorithm update and changing the way Google’s “bot” crawls the web. Now, the algorithm will index a mobile website first.

A mobile website may be:

• Your company website that is built on a responsive framework that automatically scales the display based on user screen size
• A separate version of your website that users can access by toggling from the desktop version and vice versa
• A completely separate website

The mobile-first initiative is expected to impact rankings for many websites.

What You Have to Do to Maintain Search Engine Visibility in a Mobile-First World

By prioritizing mobile websites in its indexing, Google (and other search engines to follow) is prioritizing the mobile user experience. And by doing so, mobile-first indexing changes the ranking impact of some known factors. For instance, loading speed, while always important, takes on a new significance in the mobile-first world.

So, to maintain visibility in organic search engine results pages (SERPs), you have to make sure your mobile website*:

• Loads fast

Site loading speed cannot be underrated in a mobile-first environment. Mobile devices are employed by users-on-the-go who have even less patience than desktop users when it comes to waiting for a website to be completely visible and functional.

Although Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is not the only way to increase site loading speed, it is a data structuring practice that Google has never been shy about favoring. So, AMPing pages may be a strategy worth considering to maintain top SERP ranking (or finally climb ahead of your competitors).

• Features elements that display well on mobile devices

In addition to optimizing loading speed, you need to consider the user experience when trying to view and/or manipulate certain elements. For instance, even if you optimize images for fast loading and they automatically scale for screen size, is that infographic going to be readable without the users zooming in/out and repositioning it multiple times? Will the user know how to get back to the main page if they click something that directs them to an off-site tool or subdomain?

• Is intuitive to navigate

User-friendly navigation has always been a ranking factor, but it’s even more important on mobile devices where users do not have a “big picture”—i.e., a full-size menu—to help them visualize the organization of the site.

If you have an ecommerce website, navigation is even more important because you have to make sure your viewers know how to keep moving down the funnel to complete a sale before frustration makes them abandon a cart.

As always, mobile-first indexing will use user behavior, like bounce rate and time on page, to rank mobile assets.

What SonicSEO.com Clients Have to Do to Maintain Search Engine Visibility in a mobile-first World

Some businesses may be left scrambling to get their websites back on the first page of mobile-first SERPs to maintain visibility. But not SonicSEO.com clients.

As an industry leader, we’ve known that mobile-first indexing has been coming for quite some time. So, we prepared. We made sure we did all the right stuff to make your website rank well no matter which version is given indexing priority.

Our clients’ websites have already been:

• Built on a responsive or mobile-friendly framework
• AMPed for top page-loading speed
• Designed for easy navigation
• Designed to eliminate elements that are likely to frustrate mobile users

No panic required.

If you need assistance updating your website for mobile-first performance, contact us to schedule a free consultation.

* Actually, we recommend making sure even websites intended for desktop viewing conform to mobile-first preferences because there is no reason to not to optimize every users’ experience.

Make Sure You Are Searchable Locally

Mobile devices make it possible to map users, and pinpointing their location makes it possible for search engines to deliver local results for their searches. To make sure that search engines know where you are so that you can rise to the top of local organic searches:

1. Update and optimize your Google My Business profile. Your profile is what puts you on Google maps, and an optimized profile can help Google better understand what your company does and what you have to offer its consumers.

2. Put your company name, address, phone number and directions from major landmarks or directional helps in text, not an image that can’t be fully indexed. Bot-readable contact information gives search engines another source from which to determine your relevancy for local searches.

3. Include your location in areas with high SEO-value, like page titles and headings.

You can boost your local search ranking potential with links to popular review sites, like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Angie’s List, etc. Many visitors take the initiative to post reviews on their own, but if you want more, ask! Put a sign up in your point-of-sales area or create a thank-you page with a link or invitation to leave a review post-online sale.

Make Sure You Are Voice-Search-Friendly

Voice search is growing. By 2020, 50% of all Internet searches are expected to be voice-activated. Like traditional search, keyword phrases are at the heart of voice-search success, but keywords that work for typed searches are not likely to yield good voice-search results.

To be voice-search-friendly, use keyword phrases that:

• Sound conversational…because people are going to talk to Siri (or Alexa or Cortana or OK Google) like they talk to their friends.
• Answer questions voice-searchers are likely to ask:
  • What?
  • Where?
  • When?
  • How?
  • Why?

The keyword phrases that answer searcher questions are likely going to be pretty lengthy—that’s okay. Long-tail keyword phrases are have better ranking potential in voice searches, and they’re less competitive.

Make Sure Your Efforts Aren’t Wasted

Investing the time and effort to make your business “pop” in local and voice searches is all for naught if your website is not mobile-friendly. While responsive design is nearly standard for most websites designed and engineered today, if you have a well-established website that has not been updated in a while, you may run the risk of being mobile-invisible.

To find out how to make maintain your online visibility in a mobile-only world, contact SonicSEO.com.

Mobile advertising

Every report about Internet usage shows the same thing—mobile usage is up and is expected to keep increasing. Last year, already, mobile devices surpassed desktops and laptops as users’ preferred devices to access the Web. A growing number of users are using mobile devices exclusively to access the Internet.

So, if you want to reach your target market, you should consider advertisements posted where your potential customers are most likely to see them—on mobile devices.

However, you cannot invest in mobile advertising without also ensuring that your website—the one place online where you completely control what’s said about your company—is also mobile-friendly. The algorithms used to determine what ads to display to mobile users are just as sophisticated as “regular” search engine algorithms. Search engines are not going to direct their users to (paid) sites that do not deliver a good mobile experience.

Advertising on the most promising channels

When you’re ready to invest in mobile advertising, you can get more “bang for your buck” by advertising on channels that yield the best visibility. To date, the two most popular platforms for mobile advertising are, by far, Google and Facebook.

These two platforms take very different approaches to mobile ads:

• Google, with the powerful mobile search algorithm backing its ad placement, offers mobile users ad results relevant to their geographic location, search and purchase history, etc.
• Facebook delivers an image-driven ad experience for its users, favoring ads with images and videos.

Ultimately, though, your choice of mobile advertising platform should be driven by your target market—where they are and where they search. In fact, the same is true for non-mobile online advertising as well.

Voice search

Voice search is emerging as an advertising powerhouse with the rise of mobile devices with integrated voice search capability and the improvement of results generated by voice-activate searches. Voice search is likely to be especially important for businesses that compete locally—e.g., restaurants, retailers, home service providers, etc.

Need Help with Your Online Advertising?

There’s a lot more to crafting effective online ads than simply knowing where to put them. SonicSEO.com can help your business get the most from your online advertising dollar by crafting targeted ads and selecting the best platforms for your industry and market. If you’re not already taking advantage of our comprehensive Internet marketing capabilities, contact us today.

What Is AMP?

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is a set of web development standards cooperatively created by Google, Twitter and WordPress that are available to all website developers so that web pages (including ads and images) consistently load faster.

AMP is a three-part framework that involves:

• AMP HTML—standard hypertext markup language (HTML) with restrictions
• AMP JS—Java Script framework to manage asynchronous page element loading that does not allow third-party Java Script handling.
• AMP CDN—a content delivery network that caches AMPed pages

To those in the web development community, a set of open standards that promises to improve mobile performance and be rewarded by the search engine giants is an exciting development. Before AMP, developers face the unenviable task of selecting (or coding) a proprietary scheme or set of standards for mobile platform optimization that may or may not work and may or may not make any difference to mobile SEO.

Will AMP Affect SEO?

Google is placing an emphasis on mobile friendliness, so very likely, yes, AMP will soon become a clear ranking factor (to date, Google has made no announcement about such a change to its search algorithm). AMPed pages have been seen in mobile search results since early 2016, and conformity to AMP standards is likely going to affect SEO performance on any device in the near future.

How Do You Implement AMP?

You have two options when implementing AMP:

1. Partial AMP

If your website is already fully-built, you may create select AMPed pages (essentially duplicates of existing pages that conform to AMP standards)

2. AMP from the ground-up

If you are creating a website from scratch, you can build the entire website using AMP standards so that every page’s CSS conforms to AMP restrictions, every image is custom tagged, etc.

SonicSEO.com is already working on implementing AMP to our clients’ websites. If you would like an update about which pages have been selected for mobile enhancement and what AMP implementation means for you, please contact us.

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