Hudson, Business and Government, Will Be Demoted in Web Search Results
The trend of people accessing the web predominantly on their mobile devices is so strong that Google has announced that as of April 21, 2015 websites that are not mobile ready will be downgraded in their search findings. Google offers a guide and mobile responsiveness test site so that you can test you own site. Google is taking this step because an ever increasing portion of all visits to websites are being done on smart phones (iPhones and Android predominantly). They do not want to provide search results that lead to websites that are unusable on these devices.
Businesses and other institutions in and around Hudson are not well prepared for this. Most websites are virtually unusable on smart phones like iPhones and Androids. The text is tiny and finding anything requires much pinching and scrolling.
Here are some local websites that are mobile phone ready:
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- Are the History Purists on alert about this weird balcony on top of the oriel??
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- Air bladder
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- A view from the balcony overlooking Uberorgan
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- The recorder unit
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- Wide pine boards being as;caged from Savoia bldg.
Here is a sampling of websites that will be downgraded.
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- Work underway at old Savoia bldg.
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- Yesterday’sjokje transformed. In front of The Spotty.
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- Player with Mylar score
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- Reed and Controller Assembly
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- Promenade Hill
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- Always surprised by the size of Bliss Tower.
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- Two doors down from The Spotty.
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- One or then worst looking buildings in Hudson
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- In front of The Spotty.
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- Reed and Controller Assembly
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- Another very ugly building.
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- Uberorgan recorder and player
What to Do?? A Few Suggestions
If you have a WordPress site there are fairly simple steps to make most mobile responsive. You can contact me for more about that. Check out the WPTouchPro plugin.
For others, go to your web developer and ask them to fix the site.
If you are thinking about redesigning or creating a new website start your design work on the scale of mobile devices. Think about the information your customers most need to know (e.g. location, hours of operation, reservations, telephone number, etc.) and make sure that is either on the home page or very easily accessed at the top of a menu. Make telephone numbers active so that customers can just click on the number to call you.
Don’t be taken in by fancy visual design.Make sure your developer optimizes every image. Any image over 100KB is too big. Most should be 30-40KB. Otherwise your customers are staring at their phone wondering why it takes so long to load your site.
Think of your website as an extension of the sign in front of your business. Customers don’t expect the sign to tell the whole story, but they do want to know how to find the front door.