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10 FEDA News & Views By Stacy Ward, Managing Editor stacy@feda.com M any have been slow to heed the warnings, but Google has been undeterred in its efforts to improve the user experience for the growing number of browsers visiting websites on mobile devices. As early as 2013, the search engine giant began lay- ing the groundwork to respond to the popularity of mobile by flagging sites that wouldn't display on smartphones and other handheld devices. That was followed by a trail of bread crumbs dis- persed throughout search engine pages to drive traffic to compliant sites. Those equipped with scalable content, in addi- tion to meeting other criteria, were stamped with Google's "mobile-friendly" label, arming users with more informed options. Then came the big announcement in 2015, when Google alerted websites and business owners that it would be using "mobile-friendliness" as a ranking signal starting April 21. At the time, the change referred specifically to searches done on mobile devices—not desktops—but now Google is experimenting with mobile first indexing. Meaning, it will look at the content of the mobile version of your site first to evaluate where your website should land in the rankings. Don't have a mobile version? Then Google will evaluate the desktop version to determine rank. So, here's why you should care: Chances are if a potential customer decides to access your site using a smartphone or tablet, they may not be able to find you because you're buried in the rankings. And if they do, websites that are designed for a desktop or laptop don't work well on smaller How Ignoring the Inevitable Could Cost You Customers screens. That means it's likely to be a short visit. Ask Eric Myers. He's helped two food- service equipment distributors upgrade their platforms, Restaurant Equippers and most recently The Wasserstrom Co., where he spearheaded the yearlong overhaul of the Columbus, Ohio-based, distributor's website and now serves as its vice president of Ecommerce. "Smaller screens present a lot of chal- lenges, both from a visual standpoint and from a user interaction standpoint," says Myers, who's worked extensively in the ecommerce and online marketing fields for years. "A website that's built for a computer monitor may work on a mobile device but the page and its content are tiny. It really isn't optimized for fingers and thumbs to touch and cripples the user experience." What's his advice for other E&S own- ers who are wondering if investing in a mobile site or responsive design is worth the effort? Follow the data. Bounce rates, the pages that attract the most clicks— there are a number of telling stats you can track with Google Analytics, includ- ing the frequency of specific mobile devices entering your site. The iPad and iPhone are the two most popular devices used to access wasserstrom.com and represent more than 50 percent of its mobile traffic— activity that's been steadily building for the past few months, according to Myers. "Android devices are a little bit harder to track because they're fragmented," he says. "There's Samsung, Nokia, Kyocera… all the different Motorola versions out there, and they're all counted separately." A quick fun fact: The Xbox One falls under the category of mobile. "It's not a standard desktop platform so I guess Google considers it a mobile device," says Myers, adding that there are a few customers who use the gaming system to access their site. "Even if you're not mobile-friendly," he says, "you should be using Google Analytics to keep track of the visitors that are coming to your site because many of them may be using mobile. Take the older Wasserstrom site for example. People would come via mobile but once they realized it was not mobile-friendly, they'd leave after just one page." That, coupled with the stiff penalties rolled out by Google, is what finally led Wasserstrom to move forward with its plans to dismantle its website and transition from an older version of IBM's WebSphere to one that included an continued on page 12 Mobile Vs. Desktop The Case for User-Friendly On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is dif- ficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? Jakob Nielsen