Why Your Business Should Care About Mobile Page Speed
Posted on September 5, 2016
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the following narrative over the past few years, “Well, as long as people get to my website, then everything is going okay.” But is it though?
Perhaps a few years ago it would have made perfect sense to say the above statement, but in the current fast-paced world of digital–especially mobile–it’s becoming more and more about speed and how quickly users can get to your content.
What The Data Shows
Source: https://ssl.gstatic.com/think/docs/creating-moments-that-matter-infographic_infographics.pdf
According to a recent article from SearchEngineLand, over 50% of all searches are done from a mobile device (smartphone tablet, etc.). What’s even more interesting is that Google reported that 20% of mobile searches have been VOICE assisted. This shows a truly changing mobile environment that a business owner should be aware of.
Mobile Speed: Things To Consider
Site Accessibility:
- A customer is more likely to leave your site without acting if your content is not easily accessible. Questions to ask your web developer might be: “Is my site content easily readable?”; “Does the font look large enough on a mobile device?”; “Do all links work and do they point to the right place?”.
- If your site is too complex, has too many links, and has a generally cluttered feel, you may want to trim some of the “fat”. Many web developers tend to overdo it on content for the sake of getting their clients a higher ranking on search. But as content is still one of the most important aspects of SEO, it now seems that shorter, more engaging chunks of content, especially video, prove to have a greater impact. Lastly, a site that has too much content will load more slowly than one that has more concise, user-friendly content.
- Does the content on each page of your site make sense to the overall purpose or point you are trying to make? This seems obvious, but it’s crazy when one sees how much content is “filler” or “fluff” added to make the site seem more official, or longer. As in the last point above, make sure your content is concise and to the point. This doesn’t necessarily mean that having long bits of content on pages hurt; just know that most readers scan long chunks of content now, which further supports the idea of having a speedy site.
- Does your site use proper grammar? You would be surprised how many sites that I come across that contain grammatical errors, run-on sentences, and other unnecessary errors. Before you publish your site, make sure your designer is spell-checking everything they do.
Rich Content:
Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
The Google Accelerated Mobile Pages project is an ambitious new program designed at making the mobile-web lightning fast. The premise behind this new way of coding web pages is to show only crucial content to mobile users and deliver it extremely fast. This means limiting traditional images, video, and other bulky items, and replacing them with AMP-optimized versions. The result is a very fast web page that aims to serve up content as quickly and efficiently as possible.
While BZ is currently experimenting with this new way of coding, we are anxious to start offering it to our customers in the coming year. As a small business, this new way of designing will help local customers access your information faster while increasing your conversions.
Takeaways
1. Clear, Concise Content
Limit the amount of filler or “fluff” and think of your content in terms of what your customer is coming there for in the first place. Make the content easy to navigate, easy to understand, and easy to act on.
2. Limit Images & Video
As Google found, you will experience more conversions and better bounce rates on mobile when you limit the amount of images and video. This will also increase your mobile speed.
If you’d like to test your mobile speed, there are a number of free tools available to you:
Seth Zindler