User behavior has permanently shifted in favor of the use of mobile devices over desktops. The majority of web traffic comes from mobile devices including the majority of Google search traffic.
Email is also more likely to be opened via mobile devices than desktops; Apple’s iPhone email client alone tops the usage list with 29% of all emails being opened. And the internet is now actively working against sites that aren’t including a mobile friendly experience. Earlier this year, Google adjusted its algorithm to prioritize mobile friendly / responsive sites in search rankings. This change, ominously coined as Mobilegeddon in the press, has resulted in 50% of non-mobile friendly links dropping in search rank.
Nonprofits should respond to this change in user behavior and technology by first evaluating their web properties to determine which do not yet have a responsive experience. Google has a great tool to help diagnose problem pages here.
Next, organizations should set up website and email tracking that allows for the measurement of current performance. This information can help the organization to determine current performance and then evaluate site and email changes against industry benchmarks. Google Analytics and Litmus are both excellent services to use for this purpose.
In the short term, organizations should consider a ‘retrofit’ or 3rd party solution such as MoovWeb that can take a current desktop only website and apply a responsive experience to the existing structure and content. This type of update can make an immediate impact to the user experience on mobile devices with less cost and time than a full website redesign.
However, a full website redesign is ultimately necessary to provide a true responsive experience across all devices. The reason for this is that the content of the website itself must be re-evaluated with all users in mind, no matter what device they access the web from.