Lately, Google has been pushing those who advertise with them to design mobile-friendly websites, due to the fact that most generic websites look terrible on smartphones and other mobile devices. Google is now providing more research to support their advice. And this should go for any business owner who has a website. Take Google’s advice – make it mobile friendly!

Google is hoping that the better the mobile interaction, the more people will use Google to search for websites, businesses, and products. A lousy mobile experience not only reflects badly on the business, but also on the Google searches that sent the users there.

In a recent study conducted by a reputable market research firm, about two-thirds of smartphone users say a mobile-friendly website makes them more likely to purchase a company’s product or service, as well as return to the website in the future. 61% of smartphone users say that if they aren’t able to find what they are looking for within a short period of time, they’ll go to another website. Half of these users say that even if they like a business, they’ll use their website less often if it doesn’t work well on their smartphones or other mobile devices. 72% of smartphone and mobile device users say that a mobile-friendly website is important to them.

Google’s advice: Design a fast and simple mobile site. Make it user friendly and easy to navigate around to the different areas of content. Google notes that you can also advertise your mobile site with Google Mobile Ads, which is a notable choice for businesses if you want to reach out to the two-thirds of users who use Google search to find a website.

No matter the smartphone or mobile device (i.e. Android, Apple, etc.) it’s still important that your website is mobile-friendly, and easy to use. Why is a mobile-friendly website so important? More than 800,000 smartphones are activated daily, and more importantly, over 57% of smartphone users search for businesses on their device. The top mobile websites incorporate an eye pleasing design that works well on all devices, including your pc, and deliver great content about the product or service you were searching for quickly and easily. Keep this in mind as you design your next website. What you will find is that much of your web traffic is likely to come from mobile traffic as time goes on and that is just the nature of our tech driven society.