Ensure your website is mobile-ready with this handy checklist

Mobile browsing has officially eclipsed desktop browsing. According to a recent comScore report, smartphones and tablets combined now account for 60 percent of all online traffic up from 50 percent a year ago. This doesn’t mean you don’t need to stay after your full site, because the other half is still browsing via their desktops and the hardcore purchasing and inquiries are still done via the desktop.

This shift underscores the importance of having a mobile-friendly site. You see it everyday — people in restaurants, shopping malls, in their cars, and, yes, on their boats, interacting with their smart phone or tablet to research products, find a store location and share their experiences with their social networks. When a prospect sees a boat cruise by and it piques their interest as they’re enjoying dinner dockside, be sure your website is optimized for mobile to help that shopper’s dream become a reality.

Here’s a quick list of the elements of an optimized mobile-friendly site. Can you check all the boxes?

  • Do you have a dedicated mobile site and/or a responsive site design?
  • Is your site coded to detect a mobile device and auto-load your mobile site?
  • Do you have a prominently placed link on your full site to link to your mobile site and vice-versa?
  • Is it easy to search your inventory on a mobile device?
  • Can visitors quickly and easily find all of the pictures for the boat they have chosen?
  • Is your phone number always present and in a format that only requires a touch to make a call to your dealership?
  • Is it easy to send an email to your dealership while looking at a boat or a service page?

Having a mobile-friendly or responsive website is no longer an option — it is essential for any business. It’s important to remember that according to Google research, 85 percent of Americans are never more than three feet from their cell phones!

As an added benefit, a dealer with both a mobile-friendly website and a standard website enjoys a distinct advantage over dealers who do not have one. Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other search engines and directories rank mobile-optimized businesses higher than other businesses.

The good news is that if you already have a standard website from an industry provider, like ARI, they can quickly get you up and running on a mobile-friendly site. If they can’t, you might want to consider finding one who can or risk losing customers to your competition.

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