When was the last time you visited your own website? How about from your phone, specifically?
More than 73% of web designers believe design that is not mobile-friendly is one of the top reasons that visitors choose to leave a website. If your site falls into this category, that’s a problem, as more business than ever is now being done from a smartphone.
When your website loads cleanly and efficiently even while on-the-go, you can improve your search engine rankings, differentiate yourself from the competition, and improve the user experience, ultimately growing your business. That’s a lot of benefit for one small change to your web strategy!
Whether you’re a tech fiend and feel capable of creating a mobile-friendly version yourself or you’d just like some key points to highlight for a marketing pro, let’s take a closer look at the many benefits of mobile-friendly websites for mortgage professionals:
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the art and science of fine-tuning your website and other online platforms to cater to search engines.
Basically, search engines like Google and Bing want to serve their users with the most reliable and most relevant information. They use an algorithm to determine which sites are “best” and place them at the top of the search results. These top sites then benefit from greater visibility, more traffic, and, usually, more leads. They might also see a boost in trust amongst users because there is a belief that Google is essentially co-signing the site if they rank it highly.
In order to determine who gets the top spots, search engines use bits of information like the keywords on your web pages, your service area, and even your URL to determine if you’re one of the most relevant search results.
But that’s not all. They also consider your website’s mobile-friendliness when crunching the numbers.
So, let’s imagine two nearly identical websites. The only difference is that website A has a mobile-friendly layout while website B does not. No matter which search engine you use to search, website A will be ranked more highly than website B. This means website A will probably start to outperform website B, thanks to increased visibility, traffic, and lead volume.
If you’re ready to explore the wide world of SEO, you’ll find Google’s starter guide here. A web design or marketing professional can also help boost your SEO to improve business outcomes.
Today, there are more than 25,000 mortgage professionals across the United States. That means that in order to win more business you’ll need to stand out from the crowd.
The home financing industry is notoriously slow to adapt which means that many of your competitors probably haven’t invested enough in mobile-friendly website design. This is a great opportunity to fill a need and immediately differentiate yourself.
Today, roughly 20% of websites are still not mobile-friendly. There’s a good chance some of those sites belong to mortgage professionals.
An SEO or marketing professional can conduct an audit of your site as well as your competition’s. This will highlight where your competitors are outpacing you, and help you work to narrow the gap. More importantly, it will highlight your competitors’ weak spots. This may be where mobile-friendly web design comes into play and represents the opportunities for you to meaningfully pull ahead.
User experience, also called UX, refers to the overall experience a user has when browsing your website.
Good UX can lead to greater satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement. For mortgage professionals, this might translate to more form submissions or introductory call bookings.
Bad UX, on the other hand, can lead to frustration, decreased trust, and users navigating off your site (and maybe over to your competitor’s) entirely.
Seems easy enough, right? Well, the challenge is that UX is fundamentally different on a mobile device than it is on a desktop. Mobile screens are smaller, you use your finger to navigate instead of a cursor, and you’re probably in more of a hurry when scrolling on-the-go. In other words, your desktop design just won’t cut it.
That’s why, with more than half of web traffic (54.4%) now coming from mobile, it’s more important than ever that mortgage professionals invest in a professional, efficient, mobile-friendly version of their site.
In today’s digital landscape, a mobile-friendly website is nothing short of essential. Whether you’re looking to boost your search engine rankings or simply provide an improved user experience, this essential task can pay back big.
If you’re at least a little bit techy, you might consider implementing a mobile-friendly version yourself. When in doubt, though, a web design or marketing professional can certainly help. Good luck!
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