Since Google announced Mobile-geddon in April of this year we’ve been keeping our eye on some of the clients’ website traffic whose SEO programs we manage at Comstar. Some of them have already made the move to a responsive, mobile-friendly website design, while others have not.
Six months ago Google let the world know that it was going to reward those who have mobile-friendly websites with higher rankings on searches done on mobile devices, like tablets and smart phones. With that event far back enough in the rear-view mirror, it is time to see what the results have been.
An indicator of whether a visitor finds a site useful is the bounce rate. The lower the percentage of traffic that only goes to one page of your site, the better. If a visitor on a phone comes to your site and it is not mobile-friendly, odds are that they will “bounce” away without going deeper into the site.
One client, whose responsive (RWD) website was published in January of 2015, shows an increase in traffic from mobile devices of 20% since then, compared to the same ten months in 2014. An even better indication of the value of RWD is their bounce rate, which fell from 39% on mobile devices to 17%, and their page views, which rose from 2.65 per visitor to 4.18. Mobile-friendly means more interest.
Another client, who has not yet gone to the mobile-friendly approach shows an increase in traffic on mobile devices of 26%, yet their bounce rate has gotten worse, increasing by 2% and their pages viewed and time on site has not changed measurably. More visitors with less interest in the site!
These anecdotal examples show that more people are definitely using mobile devices to view websites, but they will not investigate further than 1 page if it is not presented well on their device.
We’ll continue to gather more data on the impact of Google’s approval of responsive web design and pass it on when we can see trends.
To find out more about Comstar’s approach to mobile-friendly design, check out our company website.