5 Reasons Why Driving Mobile Traffic to Your WordPress Blog Is Essential
Today’s web environment is extremely competitive. With hundreds of millions of blogs vying for attention, it’s essential to capture the maximum amount of traffic possible. Most bloggers understand this.
Where they often fall short is that they ignore how much mobile traffic they receive. This is a mistake for many reasons. In this post, we will look at the top five reasons why driving mobile traffic to your WordPress Blog is essential.
Your Visitors Are Mobile
That’s a mistake because the average person spends nearly two and a half hours online on their phones.
If your website doesn’t display well across a range of devices, you might well miss out on this traffic.
Mobile Users Like to Buy Online
According to Statista, you could miss out on sales by not targeting mobile phone users, especially when you consider that an average value of a shopping order is $94.85 as of the second quarter 2019 in the United States.
Today’s smart devices make it simple for consumers to buy something they like. The further integration of buying across various platforms and social media sites has hastened this process. Someone might see your post on Instagram and decide to head over to your blog to buy your product.
If your site doesn’t facilitate mobile commerce, you’re losing the money to your competitors.
A Mobile-Friendly Site Improves Your Blog’s Credibility
Twenty years ago, having a site that displayed poorly on mobile was okay. It annoyed your clients, but few sites at the time were mobile-friendly. Since then, times have changed significantly.
Today, having a site that doesn’t display well makes your brand look inept. Consumers might feel that you’re out of touch with the times or don’t know what you’re doing. It’s not a leap for them to assume that information on your blog is less than valuable.
The more forward-thinking your blog purports to be, the worse it looks if it seems outdated. Would you take a review of the top Dell laptops seriously if it looked dreadful on your phone? No one would.
A website that looks bad on a smaller device damages your brand’s image. If you haven’t done so yet, switch your blog to a responsive design.
What Is Responsive Design?
There are a couple of options for web designers. They might create separate websites for mobile and desktop users. While a practical solution, it’s not ideal. You essentially create a separate page for mobile and desktop.
With this method, you design the pages for the average user’s device. This becomes problematic because of the wide range of devices on the market today.
Responsive design is a more contemporary option. It costs a little more to set up but is more versatile. With this type of system, your blog displays differently depending on the user’s device.
It Makes You More Competitive
Can you afford to miss out on 48% of all traffic? By not targeting mobile users, you’re cutting your potential traffic in half immediately.
What’s more, Google and other search engines give preference to mobile-friendly websites in search engine rankings. If you hope to remain competitive, you must work toward improving your visitor’s mobile experience.
Smartphone Users Are Increasing
The increasing affordability of smartphones has made them more accessible. According to Statista, there were just 2.5 billion users globally in 2016. This figure jumped to 3.2 billion at the end of 2019. It’s set to increase by 0.6 billion by the end of 2021.
It’s clear that smartphone use is on an upward trajectory. Cash in early by ensuring that you have a reactive blog that shows up well across several devices.
A simple trick is to start with a mobile-first design. Mobile-first means that you ensure that your blog looks outstanding on the smallest device your readers might have. If it looks good on a small screen, it’ll look striking on a large one.
Some tricks that designers use here include:
Content First
In print media, the area above the fold is prime real estate. Anything that a newspaper wants to highlight goes above the fold line. The corresponding location on a cell phone screen is an area that you can see without scrolling.
Use this to your advantage. Give your visitors the content that they’re looking for in one easy step. Put your blog logo right at the top of the page. Then consider which elements are most important for your visitors. Which sections will they most likely want to access quickly?
Make sure that the navigation buttons are clear and easy to see. They should be as near the top as possible. Choose the most common options and position these on top. Allow users to choose “See More Options” to bring up any other links.
Now add your best content. Make sure that the pictures that display are your very best and work from there.
Simple Design
You have a small space to make a significant impact. Don’t crowd that space with extraneous extras like adverts. Keep it as straightforward as possible. Consider any additions in terms of the value that they provide. Items that don’t offer value don’t deserve space.
You should also consider how many columns the text displays in. With mobile phones, it should preferably display in just one column for the best results.
Finally, look for fonts that display well online. Ensure that the font is easy to read even on the tiniest screens.
Final Notes
Not driving mobile traffic to your blog means missing out on almost half of the web users out there. Fortunately, it’s a relatively easy fix. Designing your blog on a mobile-first principle will get you part of the way there.
From there, consider the simple design principles that we’ve discussed above. Ensure that readers find the information that they need quickly and make great use of the “above the fold” space. Use simple, eye-catching designs to hook new readers and reel them in with amazing content.
