Is Your Website Responsive?
By 'responsive' we mean - does it work effectively on mobile?
If not then an imminent loss of rankings in Google and Bing is about to hit you hard.
On the 21st April Google is planning to roll out a change to its algorithm which is designed to down rank or even de-list websites that are not mobile friendly and all in the name of providing the best quality, most user friendly or interpretable info in search.
Things to check -
First, acccess your site on a small screen device - i.e. any mobile phone.
Your site is not fully responsive if any of the following things happen.
1) You see a compacted version of the site as it would appear on a desktop but you can't make it bigger with screen gestures, and probably can't ready most of it without a magnifying glass! This is called fixed or non user scalable viewport sizing. Although this may pass the Google test now - it still makes for an extremely poor user experience.
2) It opens all big and messed up and you have to use gestures to move around both vertically and horizontally. This means no attempt has been made at responsive design and this will definitely not do.
Your site is properly responsive if:-
The mobile version appears with stacked sections, readable text and images fitting into the screen. It displays a different menu to the desktop version and this menu appears to be made to fit your mobile screen like hand in glove. These are a few signs that your site is making use of CSS media queries to control layout. This will pass the test with flying colours.
Get in touch with us now if you need any help with responsive (mobile friendly) design or advice on how to best modify your existing site and bring it up to spec.
Here is a link to the Webmaster Central article, it includes some useful testing tools.
