50% of website designers ignore mobile users

Internet marketing and company profitability is crucial in today’s increasingly competitive market. The more traffic that can be driven to any website, the more likely it is that some of that traffic will convert into sales. It makes sense therefore for website designers to drive as many users as possible to websites, and that means making the most of the ever-expanding and influential mobile market. However, it may concern some of the companies who are desperate to attract this traffic that it appears half of mobile website designers are failing to take mobile phone users into account and are not designing websites for mobile visitors.

A recent survey by Heart Internet, in association with Design Shack, has revealed that web designers quite often ignore the traffic and revenue- generating potential of mobile web surfers, and aim their designs exclusively at the desktop and laptop user. This seems ludicrous given that there are numerous easy options available for these designers to optimise for mobile content.

In the survey, 500 web designers were polled. The research discovered that only 50% of the respondents considered mobile web access when designing a new website. That, in itself, is difficult to fathom, but it becomes even more incomprehensible when you consider just how quickly this sector of the market has expended over the last couple of years. Website designers are effectively precluding their clients from accessing this very profitable sector of the market, and could possible be indirectly responsible for stifling growth.

According to Heart Internet’s marketing manager, Matthew Telfer, mobile web access in the UK has increased from 0.2% of all web traffic in 2009 to 15% today:

“As more and more users start accessing the Internet via their mobile phones, websites built for large monitors and high broadband speeds become more difficult to read and slower to load. This increases the likelihood of a visitor bouncing before the page has finished loading, which in turn means the number of websites missing out on sales and returning traffic is also increasing.”

Telfer cites the latest crop of mobile development tools, such as goMobi, as evidence of just how easy it is for designers to rapidly deploy some type of mobile user experience, adding:

“The volume of traffic accessing websites using mobile phones is only going to rise for the foreseeable future. Web designers need to start adding mobile usability to their list of services quickly, and those who fail to adapt to these changes risk being left behind.”

So, is your website optimised to attract mobile users? If not, isn’t it about time it was? Just think of how much traffic your business could be missing out on.