Why Your Higher Education Site Absolutely Must be Mobile-Friendly
It used to be that having a mobile-friendly site was more about user experience than anything else. After all, 80% of internet users own a mobile device and 85% of Americans ages 18-29 own a smartphone. What’s more, at least 60% of internet access is done via mobile. It’s safe to say that these stats include the target audience of your higher education institution. Having a mobile site that is responsive to adapt to any device just makes sense from a user standpoint.
A major announcement from Google, however, has made having a mobile-friendly site not just a nice option anymore, but a virtual necessity. Read on to learn more.
Effective April 21st, 2015, the major search engine announced that any existing websites that did not feature responsive design to make them mobile-friendly would be removed from indexing. What this means is that if your college website does not meet the criteria of mobile-friendly, it will be significantly impacted in terms of search engine ranking.
It’s certainly no secret that the higher education industry is a fiercely competitive one. Schools are striving to attract, recruit and retain both quality students as well as top talent for their faculty. With more and more people using the web to research universities, either for their career growth or possible enrollment, a highly engaging website with quality content is essential. To remain competitive, it’s critical that your school’s website is easily found in the search engine results.
With Google’s new algorithm, if your site doesn’t meet the mobile criteria, chances are it’s not going to be found. Not only is it key that institutions have sites that are designed to be fast, secure and mobile-friendly, but it’s also important that the content within that site, and all related subsites, be easily accessible and updateable via a mobile device. The right CMS will provide the ideal solution to both needs, offering mobile-ready, responsive design as well as a cutting-edge mobile app so Content Managers can keep sites up-to-date from anywhere.
59% of the college population visit the website of their university of choice via a mobile device at least once per week. This stat, combined with the new requirements by Google make the need for mobile-friendly higher education websites a top priority. You can check the status of your site by entering the URL into Google’s Mobile Friendly Test tool. If it doesn’t pass the test, you’ll receive a message that says, “Not mobile-friendly” along with a bullet pointed list of the possible reasons why.
If you need help getting your site updated to avoid potential negative impact on your search engine ranking or you feel that your website could be much more mobile-ready, request a demo today.