Some Dental Practices are still resistant to having a mobile-friendly website, either because they lack the resources or don’t see the value. If your Practice falls into this category and you would like to continue being competitive online in 2016, then now is the time to start thinking about getting your website optimised for mobile.
Here are a few reasons why:
Google is now labeling websites that are optimised for mobile as “mobile-friendly” within its search results, so failing to have a mobile-optimised website can have a negative impact on your website’s click-through rate (CTR). Think about it this way, if a user performs a search with their mobile device and four of the top five results have a “mobile-friendly” label, all else being equal, the mobile user will give preference to the four results that Google identifies as being mobile-friendly. The effect of this over time is less click-throughs for the website that is not mobile-friendly, and more click-throughs for the websites that are.
Fortunately, Google provides a tool that allows website owners to test if their website is mobile-friendly. If a website passes this test, it will receive the “mobile-friendly” designation.
Google already penalises websites in mobile search that are not mobile-friendly to ensure that websites which are mobile-friendly rank higher and provide mobile searchers with a better user-experience. However, Google now appears to be taking this a step further by using the “mobile-friendly” designation as a ranking factor to promote sites that are optimised for mobile, in addition to demoting those that are not.
Consider this quote from the Google blog post that announced the new “mobile-friendly” labels:
“We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.”
If increasing rankings and click-throughs to your website isn’t enough incentive to be mobile-friendly, hopefully lost revenue is. Lacking a mobile-friendly website at a time when so many searchers use mobile devices to find products and services they need is essentially handing customers over to your competition.
The bottom line is that failing to have a mobile-friendly website is most likely already resulting in lost revenue for your organization. Consumers are becoming less and less willing to put up with poor user-experiences on their mobile devices because organizations fail to adapt to changing expectations. Your prospective customers will find the path of least resistance, and that path will lead straight to your competitors in 2016 if they have a mobile-friendly website, and your organization does not.