How Mobile Website Design is Changing Everything

When the mobile web was first released it was a good half-decade or so behind the progress of desktop browsers. Over the past decade in particular though this gap has steadily been drawing to a close. In the past couple of years though something happened, the mobile web overtook the desktop, as more people were browsing on the go than at home.

There are a number of reasons for this including new generations of smartphones making the technology possible, as well as cultural phenomenon like social media making browsing on the go commonplace, especially for the younger generation.

significance of mobile traffic

As we’ve said mobile browsing has overtaken the desktop, but even more significantly shopping is moving more and more in the direction of mobile users. What this means is that the way people spend money is changing, and that means that having a mobile website design might be the difference between healthy or unhealthy revenue from your website.

This paradigm shift has been massive, and the response from web developers has been powerful. We’ve seen a real rapid response to mobile design, and the way it’s transforming the internet is profound.

need for responsive design

The first important thing to make clear is what responsive design is. Basically because of the variety of devices now used with such range of screen sizes, it can be complicated for the code for web page to know how to display. This is why when browsing on your mobile you sometimes find that websites don’t display properly, or at all.

This means that the website isn’t responsive to your device, and you’ll have to look elsewhere. If you’re the business however, that’s a customer lost. Websites can now be custom built to work for any mobile device, tablet, laptop as well as your trusty old household desktop.

Why First Page Placement IS achievable

It seems like finding a web page from your site on the first page of Google is a little like winning the lottery, however this is far from the case. First off winning the lottery comes by chance, achieving first page placement takes skill, hard work, and innovative ideas.

The best content

First of all in whatever your industry is, you need to compete with the best, and you need to be better than them. However with recent development in Google the way this is worked out is fairer than ever, and even small websites can get on the first page with the right approach.

First of all you need to do your research. Look around at what your nearest competition, or the competition you aspire to, and see what they’re doing that you’re not. Once you have a good idea on what’s on offer it’s your turn to make something even better.

Check out the skyscraper theory, it tells us that nobody ever searches the second highest building (or at least far fewer than who search for the top). For this reason you need to do everything the competition does, and more. The reason this isn’t such a mountain as it sounds is that you can use others for inspiration.

Solid keyword research

Next you need an expert to help you with high level keyword research. By tapping into more elegant keywords than your competition, and by differentiating your keywords you can really pick up steam, increase traffic, and climb the search engine result pages in no time.

Take advantage of your locality

Finally take a shortcut to the top by using your locality to target your main audience your locals.

By placing the name of the town of your business in conjunction with your keywords you can guarantee at least local searches bring your web pages right to the top of the rank. Once you have these pages in place your traffic will grow organically, and you’ll soon see a snowball effect start to grow your traffic from over unexpected angles.

What makes blog posting unique as a way to pull in traffic

You’ll no doubt have heard about the fantastic response that many websites get from custom blogging, and the attention that blogs draw from users and consumers alike. Blogging in some cases might not seem relevant to your company, however studies have shown that even the less likely industries can benefit from setting up a blog as a part of your site.

What is blogging?

So first of all, what is blogging? Well blogging describes web posts made which are usually a little shorter than full articles. Blog posts might just be outlining a single thought, or a few comments on a certain topic. But what sets this apart from normal posts on your website?

Well a big part of what makes blogging unique is that it allows much more detail to be made, but which is separate from the main article so that only the particular users who find that post of interest need to read them.

Your main site will have several or more pages of essential information for your customers and users. These pages will receive high volumes of traffic since they will usually remain fixed for weeks, months, or years. Let’s give an example.

If your website is all about how to cut hair, and you have 12 pages which go into real detail about how to cut a particular style. Now there are plenty of offshoots to this topic which many viewers might want to know about, however none apply to all.

For this reason you might direct your viewers to your blog which may feature short articles about what equipment to use, where to find the equipment and so on. It’s true that this info could be put on the main page, but you’ll find that this might mean that your pages go on forever, making them a pain to read for your users who now must rummage through tonnes of info to find the bits relevant to them.

How it helps your website

In addition to giving you a place to store extra info for your customers, there is one other big advantage to blogging for your website.

By having a consistent flow of content to your website you will benefit from higher placement on Google. The more active your website seems, the more it will be prioritised by google, and the more traffic you’ll receive. It will also allow you to reach out to different types of customer, widening your reach.

The most effective and affordable small business SEO tricks

If you’re considering making the investment in an SEO specialist to help to bring your online business up to scratch then it’s handy to know what you’ll get in return for your investment.

There are plenty of different packages out there offered by different firms, and many will give you a unique quote specifically for your business needs. Here are some of the main basic small business SEO techniques which most websites can benefit from though.

be design savvy

One of the biggest turn offs for visitors to your website is a poor or over complicated website design. If your site is packed with menus on every margin, pop ups for joining newsletters, and bright colours everywhere then your user will quickly get fed up.

The best way to keep your user happy is with a clean, simple, easy to navigate website. Try to do away with unnecessary multimedia, especially anything that is on auto play.

design for mobile

In the past few years web browsing on a desktop device has been overtaken by mobile browsing for the first time. This is certainly one of the major trends of the decade, and the importance of browsing and shopping online is only likely to move more in this direction.

Designing your website so that it can be viewed across devices with different screen sizes is called responsive design, and it’s so important today because users browse with different mobile phones, tablet devices, as well as traditional desktop screens. Missing responsive design means missing big chunks of your possible audience.

long-tail keywords

The traditional tactic for using keywords involved trying to monopolise on the most popular keywords for your industry, today though things are a little more subtle. By researching longer, more specific key phrases you can bottleneck the most relevant searchers toward your individual pages.

quality backlinks

Finally your web developer will work on building long-term high quality Backlinks with websites which will in time become your partners if things work well. The way this works is that if your business fixes bicycles, you will link relevant pages of your site to bike providers and so on, extending the usefulness of your site for your customers, through other websites.

New features of responsive web design to look out for

With the growth of the mobile web we’ve seen fascinating new way of extra responsive web design cropping up, and they’re changing the way we browse the web in a beautiful way. Recent developments are beginning to make the way we browse the web more effective, more responsive, and more beautiful. This is why mobile web design is now more crucial than ever for the success of your website.

It seems like every day some new revolution is making the news, but here are our favourite recent developments in responsive web design, you’ve probably seen some of them already, but might not know much about them.

Ghost buttons

Ghost buttons are small transparent icons that take replace the buttons you’re more familiar with clicking on. Traditional button icons which you use to move from page to page, or make selections were very solid, and seemed fixed in place. Ghost buttons seem like a layer above the content below, and can blend seamlessly with the background, giving design the foreground, while functionality becomes more discrete.

Hidden Menus
Very popular now for shopping sites, especially in the fashion industry, but by now popular in pretty much any industry, hidden menus. Again menus were traditionally more solid, now menus can slide or fade in and out of view as you navigate the page. This is great for a few reasons, firstly it allows for far more ease when browsing, not needing to return to a fixed menu, now it comes with you.

Also because the menu hides when you’re not using it, the whole page space can be dedicated to the content, far more focussed. Focus is a trend in design more generally too and is changing the colour of the internet.

Colour
When the internet was new, it was cool to be flashy. Bright colours, text, elaborate font, and a general lack of taste were in. Design has recently got much classier though, and more gentle tonal colours help the user to focus on the content, and not the page it’s on.