If you haven’t spent much time optimizing your website for mobile, it’s almost too late! More users access the web via mobile than ever before. One question that most legal marketers ask themselves is, “How should my website look on a smartphone?” The way your site loads on a phone makes a big difference for users and subsequently, potential cases your firm signs. Here’s a few ways you can tackle mobile optimization, plus what Google recommends.

Types of Mobile Sites

There are three ways you can set up your site for mobile. Each configuration has its own pros and cons. Here’s a little more information on the different configurations you could use for your firm’s mobile website:

Responsive web design—this means that your website will change its size and formatting to fit the display screen of the user. Responsive web design is usually inexpensive, but coding the style and format of your mobile site can be tedious, especially if you don’t have a dedicated web development team. Another con with responsive web design is it’s dependent on your main website. If your server is down, you won’t get traffic from tablet or mobile users.

Dynamic serving—this is where you have a different version of your mobile site depending on what type of device a user has, whether it be an iPhone, tablet, or TV. Dynamic serving is the most expensive option, but leaves you with a lot of room for customizable user experience.

Separate URLs—this is where you have a separate mobile website (think www .yourfirm.com as opposed to m.yourfirm.com). Separate URLs should load much faster than a responsive site, but at the same time, you’ll need to maintain two websites as opposed to one. This is the most challenging option to maintain over time.

What Google Recommends

Google recommends setting up a mobile site with responsive web design. Google states many reasons why it prefers this formatting for mobile, but the top is that it’s easier for users to share your content and link to your firm’s website. Another reason why responsive web design is recommended is because Google has an easier time crawling and indexing your website when there is just one version of it.

Why Do You Need Mobile?

If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re losing a lot of traffic. Google has recommended strong mobile sites in the past, and in July 2018 Google will penalize sites that have slow load speeds on mobile. If you don’t have a good mobile site, you’ll lose a lot of online traffic.

Social Security disability attorneys and advocates are not exempt from this rule! Internet access via phones is increasing every year. Mobile surpassed desktop with more global users back in 2013. More than 75% of consumers age 55+ used a smartphone to access the internet in 2015. While Social Security disability claimants may not be quite as tech-savvy as the rest of the population, they still use their mobile devices to access the internet more often than a desktop computer.

While optimizing a mobile website may seem like a daunting task, it’s critical to ensuring your firm gets as much online traffic as possible.

Sources Used: smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/