The dash to mobile continues
The importance of mobile compatibility for your dental website
When Dental Media launched their first mobile dental website back in early 2011, around 6% of website traffic originated from mobile devices. At that time, if budget dictated that your business couldn’t stretch to a mobile version of your website, it wasn’t going to kill you in terms of missed new patient enquiries. However, now it’s quite different….
Back then we predicted that mobile usage would grow at a significant pace and at some point, preferably sooner rather than later, we recommended that you should add “mobile” to the list of “must-haves” in the practice budget. Two years later, mobile traffic now represents well over 20% of all web traffic with some site statistics showing in excess of 30%. So we are already past the point of a mobile website being a luxury add-on and at the stage where failure to implement will result in missed opportunities.
So what are my options?
There are two routes you can take to establish a mobile presence for your dental website:
- Develop a mobile version to work alongside your existing desk-top version. If your website is fairly new but wasn’t designed to be compatible with mobile (i.e. not “responsive”) then you should consider a stand-alone, mobile version of your main website. We develop mobile dental websites that are optimised to be ultra-fast loading and with prominent “click-to-call” features – ideal for the smaller browsers on mobile ‘phones.
- If you are building a new website or upgrading an existing version, the only recommended way forward is a new technique called “responsive” design. This is actually one website that automatically presents optimised content depending on the viewing device i.e. PC, tablet or mobile. The advantages here are clear:
One responsive dental website = lower development and maintenance costs, consistent information for users and better SEO opportunities.
What is Google saying about optimisation for mobile?
Google sees “mobile” as a huge opportunity for marketing, both for their users and ultimately for their own business. As such they are making huge efforts to illustrate the advantages of mobile, including the launch of a dedicated website “How To Go Mo” including a mobile ROI calculator. They have also indicated that websites that are optimised for mobile can receive preferential ranking positions.
We would be foolish to disregard such clear guidance from Google.
So how do I go about developing a mobile web presence for my dental practice?
Please call Dental Media on 01332 672548 or use our contact form and we’ll be pleased to assist. Over the last two years we have launched numerous stand-alone mobile websites for dentists. In the last few months, our new launches have incorporated full responsive design optimised for display across all platforms.
To summarise, with mobile traffic already moving towards 30% of all web traffic and set to increase further, failure to optimise for mobile will result in missed opportunities. Please get in touch to see how we can resolve this very cost-effectively.