Techblog
SMEs need mobile friendly sites to stay ahead in search rankings
As more emphasis is placed on mobile-friendly sites, digital agency APD’s digital director Ed Choa, and SEO director, Saiful Nur Adil Haris, talk about how the things to take note of when designing a device-responsive website.
Search engine giant Google has announced that it will slowly roll out a mobile-only search index. It said in November: “We have begun experiments to make our index mobile-first”. This means that Google will use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages and to show snippets from those pages in the search results. SMEs will therefore have to make sure their websites are mobile-friendly so that it does not affect search rankings.
Below are some ways to ensure that you have a great working website – for both mobile and desktop.
Understand the customer journey
Whether a website is meant for mobile or desktop devices, it is imperative that SMEs understand just what they want to achieve with their website while helping customers achieve their goals, Mr Choa said.
“Customers often don’t take enough time to properly map out the customer’s journey and understand what they might want. This makes it difficult for SMEs to create an effective website – whether it’s for mobile or desktop,” he said.
When building a website, SMEs should ask themselves a few questions. These include:
- What do I want my website to do? (Is it just a site for information or is it an e-commerce site that will sell directly to customers)
- What does my brand stand for?
- What does my business bring to customers?
- What is my demographic?
- Who is my target audience?
- What is my target region?
After answering these questions, SMEs will then have a better idea of their website should focus on as it will now focus on what the needs and concerns of consumers are, said Mr Choa.
This helps SME owners understand and map out their customer journey, which is a crucial but often overlooked step when designing a website.
Mr Choa said: “A website should always be customer-focused”.
Importance of Search Engine Optimisation
Mr Saiful said that many SMEs often spend a lot of time and money designing beautiful websites but completely overlook the importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
“A good website is the marriage of a good design and SEO,” Mr Saiful said. “How are people going to see your beautiful website if they cannot find you?” he said.
He also said SEO should be an ongoing, long-term plan.
“Many SMEs just do it at the start when they are launching the website and then forget about SEO. But it should be a constant. You have to constantly look at the data and tweak the SEO accordingly,” Mr Saiful said. He also said that businesses will not be able to see the results of SEO immediately – it will take at least six months for businesses to see results.
Some good SEO practices include making the URL links relevant. For example, if a company is selling shoes, links should include the word ‘shoes’. This will ensure that the website goes up in ranking.
Web Builder is an easy website building tool that makes SEO easy for SMEs. Besides allowing users to easily manage the site's design and content, Web Builder also enables users to add searchable keywords and meta descriptions to improve Google search ranking. It also has an auto-generated sitemap that allows search engines to index new pages for improved search results.
Make your site mobile-friendly
Mr Choa advises SMEs who are designing their websites to always look at mobile first as more consumers are using their mobile devices to search.
“Businesses should keep a mobile device in mind and then expand it further for desktop after. This will ensure that the mobile site is simply not an afterthought. This also makes sense as most searches are now made on mobile devices,” he said.
He also said that mobile sites should only show selected content that is relevant. “Otherwise, it may slow down the site and it will turn off potential customers,” Mr Choa said.
Another tip Mr Choa gave was to ensure faster speed by decreasing the file size. This can be done by compressing photos.
One tool that will help businesses build a mobile-friendly eCommerce website is Shopify. It offers many mobile-ready responsive designs and it can help businesses easily create a mobile ecommerce website that allow customers to easily browse and buy from a store using their mobile phone.
In conclusion, it is important to note that simply having a beautiful website is not enough. SMEs should understand what their customers need and ensure that customers are able to find their website with good SEO practice.
- Map out a customer’s journey by figuring out how your business can help customers achieve their needs and goals
- Make sure businesses have good SEO practice so that customers are able to find your product or service
- For mobile-friendly sites, make sure you only have relevant content.