Is your website mobile friendly? – With the rapid advancement of technologies in the online world,affiliates have to keep track and stay on top of these advancements in order to remain relevant and successful in the online marketing world.

We are witnessing in the past few years an increase in the use of mobile devices, from smartphones to tablets and even smart-watches are now coming into play. More and more iPhone and Android mobile phones are being activated, iPads and tablets are also on the rise while at the same time desktops are starting to see a steady decline. There are more and more apps being developed and most importantly, more and more websites are starting to become mobile friendly through responsive design.

Is your website mobile friendly?

A strong indicator of the relevance and importance of having a mobile friendly website are the results stemming from the 2014 Mobile Share Report produced by BrightEdge, showing that sixty two percent (62%) of organic searches today show different results depending on whether the search was performed on a desktop or a smartphone.

Therefore, it is a necessity for affiliates to have a mobile friendly website in order to penetrate and attract traffic of this kind. The keyword for this to be achieved, is “responsive”.

In this modern Internet world, responsive web-design is now a basic requirement for almost all the websites and it is also suggested by Google.

What is a responsive website and why to use it?

Responsive web-design is a style of website development where both the layout and the content responds to the device on which it is being displayed as well as to the size of the screen of that specific device.

There are several advantages of having a responsive website:

• Enhancing the visitors browsing experience.
• Increasing conversion rates of the website.
• Increasing traffic via various devices.
• Cost and time effective.
• Increasing search engine rankings.

How to optimise for mobile search?

With the steady increase in mobile users, affiliates have to adapt and optimise to the requirements of mobile users and the specific rules of mobile research.

These are a few of the basic things to consider:

• -Simplicity is good
• -Keywords and phrases are shorter for mobile users
• -Mobile search is more often than not, a local search
• -Top 10 is actually top 3 on mobile.
• -Submit your website to major mobile search engines and location based platforms
• -Follow mobile friendly standards
• -Remember the Meta.txt
• -Avoid long pages and utilize the empty space
• -Keep desktop and mobile version brand consistent
• -Avoid Flash

Summary:
Even though mobile websites and mobile marketing is growing and promises loads of opportunities, it should be treated as an ingredient of a much larger marketing picture. Focusing on only one ingredient is similar to having a Greek salad with only tomatoes. Sometimes trying to diversify can be difficult for affiliates, but connecting with more customers and attracting more traffic is generally worth the extra effort. (Written by Jesper Kauth, Head of Online Affiliates Agoda.com)