Going mobile is one of the best ways a company can gain revenue and customers today. However, if a mobile implementation is botched, companies can lose on average 68 percent of their smartphone traffic.
In a new study by BrightEdge, some 27 percent of mobile sites have various errors with their mobile development and implementation. BridgeEdge studied dynamic serving, responsive design, and separate mobile URLs in order to see which dynamic had the most errors. Not only does Google support all three types, but mobile responsive web design has been deemed the choice solution. With that being the case, BrightEdge tested sites with implemented responsive design versus other mobile solutions to see if it resulted in differences between smartphone rankings.
They found that the change in search engine rank was minimal: -0.51 for Responsive, -0.57 for Dynamic, and -0.52 for Separate. From the study:
“Data from BrightEdge's Data Cube shows that for a given keyword, on average, a website's rank for smartphone users varies only slightly based on the type of mobile configuration a website has implemented. So, for example, if a site is ranked No. 3 on a desktop, it would rank 3.5 (on average) on a smartphone device. This data represents the average across billions of keywords studied."
On the other hand, the study found that errors inundated 72 percent of separate mobile URLs. Says the study:
“For separate mobile URLs, there are a handful of common mistakes made in implementation," the report said. "BrightEdge research showed that no HTTP Vary header was a common mistake amongst two approaches: dynamic serving (82 percent) and separate mobile URLs (41 percent). And among the separate mobile URL approaches, not having an alternate URL tag was the most common error 61 percent of the time."
Sources:
- “Mobile Implementation Errors Cost Sites 68% of Organic Smartphone Traffic [Study].” 2014. SearchEngineWatch.com
- “Study: Implementing Incorrect Mobile Solutions Costs Sites 68% of Traffic.” 2014. scottheron.co.uk
- “Choose Your Own Adventure: The Mobile Happy Ending.” 2014. smallbusiness.yahoo.com
