PS&L Blog

On September 21, 2011 Google announced that in the coming weeks they were going to start using a site’s mobile friendliness as part of their quality score ratings for AdWords campaigns.  This is on top of the decision last year to limit ad serving on high-end mobile devices if they pointed to landing pages with heavy Flash content.

Why is Google doing this?

Google wants to help their mobile users have a good experience.  Google knows that more and more people are using their smart phones to access the web and those people deserve a good experience.  So with all their muscle they are forcing web site owners to move quickly to make their sites mobile friendly.

Why are Google’s decisions important to us in Higher Education?

Whether you use AdWord campaigns or not making your web site mobile friendly is soon going to be imperative.  Do you remember the statistic from the Omni Update/Noel Levitz research that said 16% of web browsers who were unhappy with your site would drop you from their search list?  Users of technology are very unforgiving it seems.

Here are some sobering facts about mobile friendliness:

If your site takes longer than 5 seconds most people won’t wait.

If your site employs Flash most smart phones won’t deploy it.

If you run Pay-Per-Click campaigns and have said yes to the mobile option and do not have a mobile web site you are wasting your money.

If you run banner ads and do not have a mobile site you are wasting your money.

If you use QR codes and do not have a mobile site you are wasting your money.  Let’s face it,  you read the code on your mobile device and the code takes you directly to a link – if that response mechanism is not mobile friendly could anything be more wasteful?

Worst of all, if your site is not mobile friendly mobile users just turn you off and never come back.

If that isn’t enough to really get you to think you need a mobile site, how about this?  By 2015 – four years from now – Comscore says that more US internet users will access the web through mobile devices than desk top computers.  And this means all your email too.

So if you run email marketing campaigns all of the facts above apply to you too.  People who receive your email on a mobile device expect it to be mobile friendly and they expect any interaction with that email to also be mobile friendly.

It is important for all of us marketers in higher ed to test our sites on mobile devices.  One of the best ways to do that is by using a tool that Google and Mobify developed.  GoMo tests your site and gives you a score and some recommendations about how to make it better.