Photo credit: Dave77459
People sitting on the toilet?! Really??
Yes, it’s a known fact that the best place to surf the web is on the toilet with your mobile phone.
Because of this your website needs to be responsive to the needs of these “small office dwellers”.
Mobile phones and tablets different requirements of your website due to their smaller screen size. Many business websites in the past would show the big version of the site just shrunk down, so people would need to pinch and zoom and clumsily navigate around the site that way. But these days the best way is to design your site to display nicely on those devices by using Responsive Design.
If you still need some convincing (or you just want to “pass some time”), here’s 6 great reasons you should design your site with people on the toilet in mind.
Reason #1: Because your analytics tell you to
The first reason is because the data tells you that a lot of your audience is visiting on mobile.
We’re big fans of using data to guide decisions like this and in fact we wrote a very detailed post about how to decide if you should build a mobile version of your site which takes you through the steps of how to check your Google Analytics data for the right signs that you should travel down this path.
Reason #2 (ahem): Because your business needs to be finger friendly
The sad fact is that many professional business websites appear broken or don’t work at all on mobile phones and this is a disaster on the modern web.
Sometimes it’s due to using outdated technologies like Flash (which don’t display well on mobile) and sometimes it’s just that things appear lopsided or cut off so you can see the website properly.
Either way, your business needs to be finger friendly so that you can capture more value from your toilet dwelling visitors.
Reason #3: Because mobile commerce is taking over
In 2012, mobile commerce grew by over 42%. And in 2013 and 2014 the growth hasn’t slowed down.
We’ve known for a while that if you can integrate commerce features into your website and start selling online you’re opening your business up to another great revenue stream. Often this has been the saving grace for smaller businesses due to the declining retail sector.
But if your new e-commerce website isn’t website mobile friendly then you could be missing out on 20-50% of your potential customers. Check out this infographic we posted on the blog a while back and you’ll see how mobile commerce is growing and influencing the online market.
Reason #4: Because you can increase your conversions
You wouldn’t ignore 20% of people coming into your physical store, so why would you do it online?
Mobile and tablet can account for 20-50% of visitors (or more in some special cases), so if you’re looking for a great way to increase your conversions then creating a toilet browsing friendly experience on your site can give you an instant increase.
Making the website look like it belongs on those platforms is a sure way to increase engagement which, in turn, increases your conversions. See here for more about why your should make your next site responsive.
Reason #5: Because every screen is different
We test our client’s websites across a range of different web browsers which is normal for web developers to do, but we also go the extra mile and test their sites across a range of screen sizes because we understand that every screen is different.
When you design a website with mobile and tablet in mind using a responsive design methodology you can make your website look good and function well across a large range of devices.
Reason #6: Because mobile isn’t going away
Finally, our last reason is that mobile and tablet devices aren’t going away. In fact we believe that it’s the larger screened computers and sitting down at your desk that will reduce over the coming years, even in the commercial sector because mobile and tablet devices are becoming more and more capable of doing every day tasks.
This is why we are committed to making every site responsive so that no one gets left behind when these changes happen.
