My NonProfit Website Is Not Mobile-Friendly

Nobody wants to run across a website that looks – and acts – like it’s from the 1990s, but they are out there and need to be updated. They will be gone in 2 seconds and go to another organization’s site. For instance, if your nonprofit website is not mobile-friendly or outdated…

Computer technology is constantly changing, and along with it is the way websites are designed and executed. It’s not enough to just have a web presence – that presence needs to be up-to-date. In the previous three blogs we’ve covered SEO, SEM, use of social media and overall user experience. In this post we’ll cover making your site mobile-friendly.

If your nonprofit website is not mobile-friendly, that’s an issue you can’t ignore.
Smartphones are the number one wireless device in the U.S. and growing. As of May 2016, there were more than 228 million smartphones, which means that approximately 70% of Americans own one. If your customers can’t access your site on their phone, they will very quickly find a site where they can. 70% is a lot of potential customers to chase away.

Mobile tech, from smartphones to tablets, is not just smaller, but the functionality isn’t the same as sitting behind a desktop with a full-sized keyboard and mouse. The way the content is viewed and navigated is quite different. Sure, you can access a company’s site through the browser, but the experience will likely be far less than optimal if that company doesn’t support mobile access. You want a site that is as easy to use on a little smartphone screen as it is on your widescreen desktop monitor.

Google may penalize you if your nonprofit website is not mobile-friendly.
In April 2015, Google updated its algorithms to look at how mobile-friendly websites are. If a site tests low in this area, it will drop in Google’s rankings. Google isn’t trying to punish web owners who are behind the times; instead it is justifiably attempting to serve the vast and growing number of people browsing the web from mobile devices. Those people are also your potential customers!

Advertisers are already mobile.
Advertisers have been taking advantage of mobile device usage for years now. Ways of presenting ads as well as customizing them to the user based on data from mobile devices are advancing continuously. If your site has an e-commerce feature or is monetized, you can’t ignore the mobile-friendly capabilities advertisers and consumers are expecting.

When your website is just plain outdated.
If your nonprofit website is not mobile-friendly, there’s a chance it’s outdated in many other ways as well, such as nonexistent SEO or SMO, poor UX and no accessibility compliance (link to those sections and blogs). Your blog may have not been updated in a year and it says the site was created in 2002 in the footer. This turns off customers. You may simply need to patch it.   Or when you originally created your site, you went overboard with Flash and fancy plug-ins that are inaccessible on many mobile devices. In any case, you may need to start from scratch and look at how your site works from the ground up.

Do you want to make sure your site is up-to-date and mobile-friendly? No problem, let us know. We address every clients’ needs by tailoring innovative solutions – mobile-friendly web design, SEO, SEM, branding, content, marketing, graphic design – to suit each customer. Feel free to contact us for a free consultation today.