Secure your place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, March 23-25
You’d think with mobile on the tip of everyone’s tongue that just about every site would have a mobile strategy. Think again. According to Google, “most” businesses’ sites don’t work correctly on smartphones. That’s a pity because Google finds that consumer engagement increases 85 percent when a site is optimized for mobile.
The search giant wants to change that. It launched a campaign today promoting the necessity of optimized sites and landing pages for mobile devices, which includes a microsite featuring best practices and tips for doing so, as well as a list of recommended mobile development partners.
“Every day more and more of your customers are looking for you … on mobile devices. If you don’t have a site that works for mobile, you’re missing out,” a post on Google’s mobile ads blog reads.
And to be fair, Google has a point. It’s becoming increasingly cheap and easy to create mobile-friendly sites, with a range of vendors now offering tools or services to do so.
It’s undoubtedly true that marketers have, on the whole, been slow to follow their users to mobile, and efforts to educate the market like this will inevitably help change that. Obviously, Google’s motives are not altogether altruistic. The more mobile websites, the more mobile users will search, confident they’ll find something that’s not a pain to figure out. And, of course, Google still makes a mint off search. In addition, the more marketers focus on mobile Web, the less they do so on the apps, from which Google has, to date, struggled to extract revenue as successfully as its competitor Apple.
More in Media
In graphic detail: Middle-tier creators are fueling the next phase of the creator economy
Facts and figures behind the growing middle tier of creators who make less than macro creators, but convert more.
How medical creator Nick Norwitz grew his Substack paid subscribers from 900 to 5,200 within 8 months
Creator Playbook: Unpacking the strategy behind medical YouTuber Nick Norwitz turning to Substack to significantly grow his brand.
Media Briefing: In the AI era, subscribers are the real prize — and the Telegraph proves it
In an era where AI is eroding referral traffic and third-party distribution, a subscriber who pays directly has become the most valuable reader a publisher can own. Springer just bought over a million of them.