Google will update its algorithms April 21, 2015 to consider whether your website is “mobile-friendly” or not. “Mobile-friendly” means that your website displays well on a mobile device, such as a cell phone or tablet. If your website is not mobile-friendly, your website may lose some ranking on Google search results, to some degree. If your website is mobile-friendly, your website may have some advantage over competition whose websites are not mobile-friendly.
There are two basic approaches to developing website mobile-friendless:
Responsive: The responsive method is to build webpages so that they automatically adjust via HTML, CSS, and sometimes Javascript, to look good on either conventional computers or mobile devices. Sections of your web page may “flow”, contract. stretch, etc. to look and function well on any device. Sometimes website templates and themes need to be re-written using a mobile-friendly responsive web template, such as Bootstrap.
Adaptive: The Adaptive method uses server-side programming to detect mobile devices and serve some different content to that device. That could be a different visual layout, different functionality, or different user-facing content (this could be different article text/images, omitted banner ads, omitted sections, etc.).
Which method is right for your website? Every situation is different, and it all depends on the nature of your website and what it does. The responsive approach tends to be simpler, but it’s not always, and a hybrid between the two approaches is often necessary.
If your websites are not yet mobile-friendly, need improvements, or you’d just like us to take a look, let us know! It’s not too late, and it’s better late than never!
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