On Tuesday Google rolled out a major change to their search algorithm that penalizes mobile un-friendly websites when someone performs a search on a mobile device. The change has been nicknamed “Mobilegeddon” because of how apocalyptic it could be for millions of websites.
Itai Sadan, CEO of Duda, a website building company, told Business Insider, “Come April 21, a lot of small businesses are going to be really surprised that the number of visitors to their websites has dropped significantly. This is going to affect millions of sites on the web.”
According to Fortune magazine, 60% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices. If your website is not formatted to display properly on smartphones and tablets the change could already be negatively impacting traffic to your site. To see how Google ranks the mobile-friendliness of your website, head over to their new Mobile-Friendly Test.
As CBJ reported last fall, a review of dozens of websites in the indoor climbing industry revealed that most sites were not mobile ready. This means that even if users are able to find your website, mobile users will be wasting time zooming and scrolling through tiny versions of webpages and will be unable to access the pages they want through the minuscule navigation links.
Redesigning your website to be mobile friendly can be an expensive endeavor. So before you start calling web developers talk to your website host, which may have tools in place to convert your website. According to USA Today, GoDaddy, the popular provider of website addresses and hosting, offers a tool to rebuild your website and make it mobile-friendly for a $1 monthly fee. Competitor Bluehost has a tool called goMobi that will build a smaller, mobile version of your site for $25.
Luckily many people looking to find a climbing gym may search through other tools like Yelp and Google maps. So if your website isn’t mobile friendly it’s even more important that you make sure all your local information is current and up-to-date in Yelp and on Google’s MyBusiness.
Climbing Business Journal is an independent news outlet dedicated to covering the indoor climbing industry. Here you will find the latest coverage of climbing industry news, gym developments, industry best practices, risk management, climbing competitions, youth coaching and routesetting. Have an article idea? CBJ loves to hear from readers like you!
