Probably most practices have heard about having to have your website be “mobile responsive” and have taken the steps to get theirs fixed, but have you done it for real?
For instance, yesterday I met with a doctor who was sure that her website was mobile responsive and I showed her on my iPad that her website page was too wide for my iPad Mini (could not see the whole page at a glance), and so she is getting with her programmer to get this fixed.
Many are finding that their website is not fully mobile responsive. Is this important?
Google searches
Back in April this year, Google changed its way of searching and ranking websites to give higher priority to those sites that were mobile responsive. This term means that when someone searches for you or your practice from a mobile device (tablet or cell phone), your website must be able to be read easily without the need to expand the picture to be able to easily read the words on your site (without using your fingers to “grow” the size of the words) and that it also fits within the screen of their device (i.e. not too wide so you have to move the screen to see the full text or pinch it with their fingers to make it fit). If yours wasn’t properly designed for mobile responsiveness, then your website will drop down in Google searches while your competitors could rise if they had theirs already done.
Mobile Responsive
Mobile responsiveness can be achieved in two different ways: make a whole new website that works on mobile devices only; or, make your existing website be able to shape shift to be easily seen on mobile devices. Our own website programmer recommended the second choice because when you make changes to your website, you don’t also have to go and make changes to a separate mobile website as well.
Here’s the catch!
What we found out in going through the process ourselves was that some programmers are only making your site responsive on certain devices and platforms. Think about how many types of devices are out there in the market place: tablets (Android), tablets (Apple products), cell phones of every make and size (Apple and tons of Android varieties, etc.). When we tested our new mobile responsive site, it worked properly on iPhones (probably what the programmer had and tested on), but not on Samsung phones and a few other types that my staff had. It worked on the iPad but not the Samsung and other tablets, etc.
Other computers
On top of that, our programmer then made our full website only work properly on Windows 7 and above computers and only on Chrome. On other XP computers and on Internet Explorer, our website now came up all weird and off kilter. We told him that many people still have XP computers and some still prefer to use Internet Explorer to search with.
In short, we wanted to be found on anything that people might be searching with, and so we pushed our programmer until our website was truly responsive and looked well on any device whatsoever. We tested it out on all our friends devices as well until satisfied.
In the name of being found by prospective patients or clients, you should double check that your website is actually fully mobile responsive.
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Call us at 416-466-6217
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