The first step to taking your mobile visitors seriously is to find out what proportion of your blog readers are already using mobile devices. And the simplest way to do that is by using Google Analytics.
If you choose to ignore this, you risk the following:
- Less Traffic to Your Blog: As mobile usage increases, you could effectively be turning away 20% – 50% of potential traffic to your blog.
- Fewer People Signing Up For Your Email List: Without a mobile-friendly blog and email opt-in forms, new visitors will leave in frustration instead of signing up to your list.
- Potential Readers Lost Forever: A Gomez study found that 46% of mobile users are unlikely to return to a site if they had trouble accessing it from their phones. So first impressions are more important than ever.
Here’s the bottom line.
You’ve worked hard to get where you are, and you’ve worked hard to build your audience.
So you’d be crazy to lose momentum (and readers) by sticking your head in the sand and ignoring this mobile trend.
How can I be sure my site is mobile-friendly? What can I do if my site is not mobile-friendly?
1. See if your site is mobile-friendly
Visit Google’s mobile-friendly test link and enter your site’s address (e.g., http://dailypost.wordpress.com or http://automattic.com). Google will then analyze your site and declare it mobile-friendly or not.
Did your site pass? YAY! Pass GO and collect $200 from the Community Chest.
2. What can I do if my site is not mobile-friendly?
If your site failed Google’s test, you might be using an older theme that’s not responsive. Responsive themes change their layout slightly when someone visits via tablet or mobile phone to ensure that important content like the site title, post titles, and post content can be read on smaller screens.
There are two things you can do to make your site mobile-friendly:
Switch your theme to a responsive theme. Here’s a search on the Theme Showcase returning all our responsive themes to help you choose.
If you’d prefer not to switch to a responsive theme, you can enable an option that will show a mobile-friendly, responsive theme to your mobile visitors only. Go to My Site(s) → WP Admin → Appearance → Mobile in your dashboard. Click on the Yesradio
Click button to enable a mobile-friendly theme, and click on the Update button you’re set.
After all, what’s the point of going after new traffic if your blog is effectively throwing half of that traffic away? And if you don’t take steps to woo mobile users, you’ll find yourself working harder and harder to maintain the growth of your blog.
While other bloggers ride the wave of the mobile revolution.
So follow the five steps above to plug the leaks in your blog.
Because the sooner you start, the sooner that mobile traffic will come rolling in.
