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Series 2 of 3 – Mobile Responsive Design for Local Businesses
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Local business owners often ask our team if Responsive Design for their local business website is that important. Yes it is!

Reason #1: Even if you have a local and target a local audience, you still want to be found online by your customers. If you site is not mobile responsive, it will not pass Google’s mobile requirements and it will be heavily penalized. The penalty is poor indexation (aka how your site ranks for local searches) and sometimes a complete de-indexation (aka your site is not found at all unless typing the domain name directly into a browser bar).

Reason #2: Even your local customers and prospects are using a mobile device to find your company or look at your web pages. They may use their smart phones or their tablets. Though the newest numbers for 2015 are not out yet, it has been said that mobile searches are now far exceeding desktop Internet searches. What does it mean? It simply means that your local audience is most likely to use their phone, tablet or other mobile devices to look at your website instead of the traditional computer desktop. If your website is not responsive, it will make their experience difficult, complicated, annoying … and, in the end, your visitor will go to another website out of frustration. If your website is fully responsive, you will see a better conversion rate compare to when it was not.

What should you consider for Mobile Design when focusing on a local audience?

1) Streamline your mobile version! You do not have to show every single photo, text, graphic, etc. on a smart phone. It is too much data to view on a such a small screen. Having “too much stuff” dilutes the important elements such as your calls-to-action or other important items you want your visitors to see.

2) Show what is important:

  • Make sure to display your local phone number at the very top of the pages. Having a area code that matches your area is important in reinforcing the fact that your are a local business.
  • If you have a brick and mortar location, make it easy to get to directions to your office or business.
  • Also remember that people are visual so make sure to show local images when appropriate. The goal is to create this digital emotional bond with your visitor when they are using a mobile device to view your web pages. Again the idea is for them to feel that you are indeed local just like they are.

3) Focus on the visitor’s experience and journey while on your website.
Mobile devices have smaller screen. The lack of real estate make it difficult to pick and choose what should display. Saying this, you should think of what you want your users to do when on a smart phone or a table. Is it to buy something on their smart phone, make a booking, get to the contact form, sign up for a newsletter, … what is the ultimate goal when a person is on your website using a mobile device? Once you know the answer, design the mobile responsiveness to get this goal accomplished as quickly and as easily as possible.

4) Optimize for mobile local searches. When a user searches using a smart phone, they ten to use longer sentences and location. For instance on a desktop, one may search for “hair dresser” while on a smart phone they may verbalized (example: using Siri or Google) and say “I need a hair dresser today in Petaluma“. That means you have to make sure that those longer keyword empowered sentences are incorporated on your site either in the text, image name, image alt and title tags as well as meta tags.

Watch our video on mobile website needs for Local Businesses

design for local business websites

Questions about this subject?


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