Is Your Website Still Mobile Unfriendly?

In May 2015, Google confirmed that mobile searches had exceed desktop searches in 10 countries including the US and Japan.

This milestone had been anticipated for some time, and reflected in an April 2015 change to their ranking algorithm, which heavily favored mobile-friendly sites during mobile searches. Mobile-friendly, in Google’s eyes, meant that the certain website characteristics where satisfied. For example:

• Text is large enough to read
• Links aren’t too close together
• Content width doesn’t exceed the screen size
• Mobile viewport is set

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test provides an easy way to assess your website.

For many photographers, continually re-evaluating the state of their website is the furthest thought from their mind. Yet, our own mobile browsing experience validates what Google already knows: browsing a non-mobile friendly website on a tiny mobile device is painful – and often leads to abandonment.

You can argue the validity of more nuanced issues like e-commerce, mobile SEO, etc – but the ability to swipe between photos and easily navigate a site menu is indisputable. Your photography website must be mobile-friendly! Photographers using platforms like Indexibit or older services need to seriously re-evaluate whether their website is an effective marketing tool any more.

A mobile-friendly solution like PhotoShelter is an obvious solution, but there are many other options like WordPress that provide mobile-friendly templates if other tools like high-res file delivery, client proofing and e-commerce are not needed.