It’s important to highlight the impact this has on user experience. Whilst we’ve all hopefully made the effort to make our sites mobile friendly, less of us will have thought about the pace at which our site loads. Around 40% of people abandon websites that take longer than 3 seconds to load and with more than 80% of people now accessing the internet through their smartphones throughout the course of the average month, it’s more essential than ever that businesses in Devon and Cornwall have mobile-optimised sites.

The opportunity is even greater when we begin to look at Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which Google are rolling out in an attempt to make the mobile web even faster and friendlier than ever before.

You may have already noticed AMP pages appearing at the top of your Google search results; they say AMP with a small lightning bolt next to them.

So what are AMP pages?

Accelerated Mobile Pages pretty much do what they say on the tin; they’re webpages which load content almost instantaneously, hence the ‘accelerated’ term. Without getting too technical, AMP pages are unique HTML pages that prioritise speed and a fast experience for users.

They are created in addition to mobile-friendly webpages, and have expanded exposure across the entire Google Mobile Search results page, including e-commerce, entertainment, travel, news, recipe sites and more. Companies already using AMP pages include The Daily Mail, Guardian News & Media, eBay, Disney, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube.

This means, if you’re searching for something relevant to those websites, their AMP pages will appear at the top of the search results, either in the Top Stories area, in shopping results or in a new Live Coverage carousel, which is currently being developed for real-time events such as breaking news, elections and sports.

Although Google says they will not affect search ranking results, businesses with AMP pages will benefit from having their webpages appear first on mobile devices.

So if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, we’d highly recommend updating it before it gets left behind for good!

Give us a call on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk to talk to us about a new mobile-optimised website.

The post Google gives greater prominence in mobile search to AMP – does your website have it? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

With 35 – 50% of all small business website traffic now coming from mobile devices the impact on your business could be massive. So one month on, we answer some of the questions we’ve been getting.

So what’s happened?

On 21 April 2015 Google began rolling out their new mobile algorithm, which looked to rank those with a mobile friendly website higher than those without when someone searches from their smart phone.

What exactly is a mobile friendly website?

We speak with many people who believe their site is mobile friendly when it is unfortunately not. All websites will appear on a smart phone, however, as a rule of thumb, if the full width of your website page doesn’t fit onto your screen, or you find that you’re having to zoom in to see things because they’re too small to be legible, your site is not mobile friendly.

If you’re in doubt you can use Google’s testing tool here:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

How many people actually search from mobile?

The average across all industries is around 35% of site traffic, although we have seen some sites when this figure exceeds 50%.

When you think that half of your potential customers are having a negative experience of your website, it’s plausible to think you may be missing out on large amounts of potential business.

Does this impact all search results?

It’s important to highlight that this change only impacts on those searching Google from their smart phone. Desktop results will remain unchanged as a result of this new algorithm update.

Is it just my home page?

Google’s algorithm will be looking at all of your pages and not just the home page. If you do a lot of blogging and frequently add new content to your site this will be particularly important for you as these pages will be giving you a good level of visibility and ranking across Google.

You’ll want to maintain this visibility on smart phones.

Have we seen the full impact of this change?

Although the algorithm is now 30 days old, Google do take their time so it’s likely the full force of this change will only be realised over the coming months.

However, some sites have already seen significant changes to their rankings as a result of not having a mobile friendly website.

If I get a mobile friendly site, how long will it take to gain its rankings back?

Sites that make changes to improve mobile friendliness should see Google pick up on the changes within days. That said, it will take time for Google’s Web crawlers to index everything.

What should you be doing?

We recommend that if you don’t currently have a mobile friendly website you should seriously consider getting one in the near future. This isn’t because we build websites, but because you could be missing out on potential business each and every day you don’t have one.

 If you’d like to chat through your options, or discuss how this could impact your business please feel free to give us a no-obligation call.

Please do watch your rankings over the next couple weeks and months!

The post Google’s Mobile Update: Your Questions Answered appeared first on MiHiDigital.

What does it mean to you if you don’t have a website that works on mobile?

This is where we use a few analogies.

Example One

Imagine you’ve paid money for a sign writer to put some incredible new branding on your van.  Only problem is the writing runs off the end of the van, including your telephone number so nobody ever calls you.

Example Two

Imagine you’ve been asked to quote for a massive new project.  You’ve put your tender document together but there’s one slight problem.  Microsoft Word has thrown off your page margins meaning that half of your document didn’t quite make it to the printer at the other side of the desk.
You finally sort the margins out and realise you’ve put the wrong font size in and someone needs a high-powered telescopic microscope in order to zoom in and read it.
What these examples are doing is giving their target audience a poor experience, just like your website does if it isn’t responsive or mobile friendly.
The person will need to zoom in on your website, the navigation might not work correctly, the wording will be small.
Is this the image of your company that you want to portray? Does it do you justice? Can you legitimately expect that person to buy from you?

So how do you know just how much trade you’re potentially missing out on?

The good, or the bad news, depending on how you look at it is that you can easily identify how much you really need a mobile presence.  You can do this through your Google Analytics account (if you haven’t already got it you should definitely have it!).
When you visit your account go to your main analytics dashboard and under ‘Audience’ drop down to the ‘Mobile’ section.
What this will give you is a figure of the number of people visiting your site from a mobile device.
Take that number and think that those people are having a bad experience – can you afford that?
Don’t just take that figure in isolation though – go one step further.
Google Analytics will give you the figure for the last 30 days by default.  Change the time parameters to the last three months.  Can you afford that new number in front of you?
Final step – compare the last three months to the three months before it.  Is the figure increasing?  Likelihood is that the number of people visiting your site from their mobile will be on the rise.
This essentially means that as time goes by more and more people will be having a poor experience of your website.  If you’re competitors are giving them a mobile experience to die for is there a realistic expectation that they’re still going to buy from you or contact you instead of them?
The chances are they’re not.
So the question becomes, just how long can you wait?
For more information on how we can build you a website that works and looks great on all devices please give us a call on 01566 784860 or email mark@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Do you need a website that delivers for mobile? Here’s how you find out! appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Go back to 2008; the iPhone was still regarded as the new kid on the block having been launched just a year before.  During the next few years many people downloaded many Apps, some of which will still be on your phone today although the vast majority will have fallen by the wayside.

Downloading Apps was often a daily occasion, as was a churn as we deleted some off and added others.

From a business perspective there were internal calls from board rooms of “we need an App!” with little thought of the type of App they would build, who it would be aimed at, where it fitted in to the overall business and marketing strategy and most importantly the potential return on investment.

The emphasis on occasion was more on having an App than what it would be bringing to the table for the company.

Today we sit in a very different place, a more mature App marketplace in which those Apps that have been thoroughly thought through are flourishing where the knee-jerk Apps have failed.

Apps must surely be designed for a purpose, for addictive enjoyment or to support our everyday lives. If you are not fitting into one of these criteria or adding value to your customers or target marketplace your chances of success will be heavily diminished.

Look through your smart phone and have a think about how many of your Apps have been with you for more than six months and which have been at your side for much less.

In excess of 90% of the Apps on my phone have been there for a great deal of time and their longevity is inherently linked to just a few things – I either enjoy them (for games like Angy Birds), I use them to interact (for example social media including Facebook) or I need them (take the Met Office weather app as a case in point here, fulfilling my British need to know and subsequently mutter under my breath about the rain and cold!).

The daily churn of downloading App after App will soon, if it is not already, be over and to ensure your App gets through the cull you’ll need to ensure that it answers a need for a potential market.  Does it give them something they don’t already have or something that is going to make their lives better for having it?

Whilst the next Angry Birds or Candy Crush is inevitably waiting in the wings for us so will many Apps that do not add value.

Make sure that your App isn’t one of them.

For more information on how we can help build your digital strategy or work on your App please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk 

The post Mobile Apps – An evolving market in which adding value is key to avoiding the cull appeared first on MiHiDigital.

• An estimated 84 million visits are made to retail sites on Christmas Eve (972 per second)
• Once the turkey is eaten and the presents are opened an estimated 107 million of us will make a visit to an online retailer (1,238 per second)
• Boxing day, the traditional day for sales shopping, sees the largest day for online retail with a massive 113 million visits.  This accounts for 1,308 per second and 4.7 million every hour!
• Amazon has leapfrogged eBay as the most visited site during the Christmas period, raking in approximately 12% of visitor market share.  That means an estimated 36.5 million visitors will visit the Amazon website over three days, accounting for 141 visits per second!
• Despite Amazon’s impressive figures the Next Sale continues to be the most popular searched for sale on Google
• More than one in three visits made to retails sites over the Christmas period now come from a mobile.

So where will you be doing your shopping?  Is it online or the high street, or a combination of both? Does it depend on price? Are your purchases and visits made from your mobile device?

We’d love to hear! Have a very merry Christmas!

The post Christmas Statistics – Online Shopping Continues to Soar appeared first on MiHiDigital.

If only there were a way around this. Perhaps a way of building a site that has cross platform compatibility.

Responsive design does what it says on the tin. It responds to the devise on which it is being displayed. There is no better way to demonstrate this than with your browser window. If your site is responsively designed then as you pull the window smaller, before your own eyes, you will see your site begin to change to fit its pixel environment. Your navigation may fall to a drop down, your images get smaller and go from a horizontal display to a vertical series.

Throw this forward and visit the same site on your smart phone, then your iPad or other tablet. In the case of the smart phone your main navigation will become a drop down and overall your site will give your visitors a much better experience.

The Question:

What can responsive design offer you?

The Answer:

An enhanced experience across multiple platforms and to a certain extent a greater level of future proofing as more and more visits going forward emanate from phones and tablets.

Web design is all about giving the visitor the optimal site experience. Now whatever devise you are visiting with, responsive design should have a better answer for your needs without multiple development builds.

For more information on getting a responsive website please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Responsive design – what is it and why is it so popular? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

There was one slide that was of particular interest and really got me thinking…

Many have been excited about the potential of smart phones to change the way in which we consume information. They are absolutely right – it has not only changed the goal posts but also reinvented them.  Information at the fingertip and on the move has quickly transcended from defining innovation to everyday expectation.  The sheer volume of people reading this from their smart phone will pay testament to that.

Whilst this mobile marketplace is only going to continue to grow it is the way in which we consume the information around us throughout the day that continues to play a role in the success of a marketing strategy.

Now back to that slide…

It showed how people interacted with The Telegraph Newspaper over the hours of a day.

Early morning had become the domain of the smart phone, allowing a quick check of the newspaper from bed along with a browse of work emails and social networks.

Breakfast and early morning, despite the changing landscape for print magazines and newspapers, was still dominated by the hard copy newspaper.

And skipping forward to the evening? Dominance of tablets and in particular the Apple iPad, with people having more time to explore the internet and consume larger quantities of information.

So why the great interest in this slide?

It was an insight into the way things are changing and although this is a national newspaper these trends are replicated across many different industries.  The way businesses understand how their customers interact with their information is key to success and while a mobile strategy is still a priority, a cross platform approach to information provision must surely be the holy grail of the digital marketing future.

For more information on how we can help grow your online presence and develop your digital strategy please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Times they are changing! How do you interact with information throughout the hours of the day? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

For a growing number of us the answer will be that we now view websites through a variety of different platforms, whether on tablets, smart phones or our trusty desktops and that we view them at any time of the day.

Apple alone sells a reported 48 million iPhones in the average quarter.  Throw that forward to a year and that’s getting on for 200 million!  The growth is also relentless, with that figure a staggering 200% higher than had I been writing this blog post in 2010.

In the UK 12 million adults now own a tablet.  Of those with access to the internet 28% will be using a table at some point during their day.

So what do all of these answers and statistics tell us?

That, as if you didn’t already know, there is a growing trend toward people using a variety of different devices in order to access information and to reinforce or enable purchase decision making behaviour.

Consumers are transcending from single channel to multi-channel.

Where we were once able to supply everything through one single port – the desktop website – we now need to take in to consideration the way in which all of our visitors are interacting with our content in order to maximise the chances that they’ll be buying from us and not our competitors.

There has been an increased adoption by website owners in having a site that works well on mobile as well as on desktop.  For those that have not already got this, are you at risk of your customers and technology leaving you behind in the race for conversion and sales?

For those that have a website that works well on mobile, does your site fair equally well on the potentially more immersive environment of the tablet?

Tablets are often used to surf the internet and on average can be anything between four to eight times the size of your phone.  Many will only have WiFi rather than 3G connectivity so will be used in the home or the local coffee shop; they aren’t being used on the go or under time pressures.

All of this adds up to your consumers being able to be focus on and immerse themselves in your site.

So does your mobile site do the job for the tablet or is it your desktop version that’s stepping up to the plate?

Either way you’ll want to make sure there isn’t a gaping hole down the middle of your online strategy.

The moral of the current and emerging digital story is for you to have all of your bases covered; namely to make sure you look great to your customer every time they see you online.  After all, if you don’t your competitor will.

For more information on how MiHi Digital can help you create a website that looks great on all devices please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Look great to your customers or your competitors will appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Above are the mobile users for Facebook, with these figures sure to increase even more in the future.  They show that:

• Monthly users across the entire network has now risen above one billion for the first time
• 751 million users a month use their phone to go on to Facebook
• 189 million of those users now only use their mobile to access Facebook
• 30% of all of Facebook’s advertising revenue now comes from mobile

For more information on how we can help you with your mobile strategy or Facebook presence please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

*Figures taken from the Facebook earnings call for Q1 of 2013

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