Should I go with a Mobile Site or Responsive Design
-
So I work with a Video Editing Plugin company and we have hit a bit of a conundrum with our mobile site plan. At first we were going to a stripped down version of our current site since the customer base has yet to purchase off mobile and almost all of the web traffic comes from a full computer. ( As video editing on tablets still leaves a bit to be desired). I was thinking a mobile site, but at the same point, I don't want to have issues when it comes to URLs and what not.
Given that a majority of our traffic is non mobile. Would it be better to design a separate stripped down mobile site, or would responsive still be the better choice? Are mobile specific sites becoming old fashion?
-
I agree with Anthony. It is important to offer the same experience to desktop and mobile users. A responsive design, in my opinion, is much easier to manage and offers the best user experience. Google has said that they do not have a preference for one version over the other, the important thing is to have a mobile friendly version of your site. I think most professionals would recommend a responsive design unless having a responsive design creates a user experience that would be better if there were simply a mobile version of the site. I think that is the only exception.
-
I would go with responsive. From experience, a separate mobile site might be easier to setup in the short-term but will cause more issues in the long-term (I haven't ever worked on anything like a video editing website, but I would imagine it wouldn't create many other issues).
Have you looked into why no one has purchased from a mobile device? I've seen conversion issues on mobile that don't impact the desktop version of websites - sometimes checkouts that don't work at all on mobile. But as you said, most of the traffic comes from desktop browsers so it could just be that.
Although separate mobile sites will still benefit from Google's mobile update (if they're mobile friendly), Google do recommend responsive over a separate site e.g. here in their starter guide: "Google recommends using RWD over other design patterns." https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/
There's also a useful white paper from Google here: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//intl/ALL_uk/think/multiscreen/pdf/multi-screen-consumer-whitepaper_research-studies.pdf
-
Google recommends responsive design - see http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/recommendations-for-building-smartphone.html
-
Hi Josh
This may be a more subjective question, but my vote is for responsive. Even though you don't have a high volume of traffic today that is mobile, it will most likely increase and when you have a mobile-friendly page it will most likely accelerate. Some companies still go with stripped down mobile sites, but I have been seeing more people moving towards responsive to minimize the need of managing two separate sites and being able to give their mobile users as much content and functionality as possible.
Also on April 21st Google is going to start giving more preference to mobile sites. You can read more about it in the Moz article - http://moz.com/blog/9-things-about-googles-mobile-friendly-update
Hope this helps,
Anthony B
Biondo Creative
biondocreative.com
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
GWT Fetch & Render displays desktop version of site as mobile
Hi team, I noticed that when I request a desktop rendering in GWT using fetch and render, pages render as the mobile version. Screenshot attached. It's related to the VHS units in our CSS (as far as I'm aware). Does anyone know what the implications of this may be? Does it mean googlebot can only see the mobile version of our website? Any help is appreciated. Jake jgScJ
Technical SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Content on desktop and mobile
My website hasn't using responsive design and separate domain for mobile optimize, But we using dynamic serving for mobile version, Read more about dynamic serving here So our website must different design for both version, And then what would be happen in term of SEO if our website hasn't show the same content as desktop but still align with the main content, Such as Desktop has longer content compare to mobile version or Desktop has long H1 but mobile is shorter than. What should we do for this case and how to tell Google Bot.
Technical SEO | | ASKHANUMANTHAILAND0 -
Will Google Also Penalize Desktop Rankings If Your Site is Not Mobile Friendly?
Apologies if this question has already been answered. I was unable to find it. For desktop organic rankings: Will Google take into consideration mobile-readiness as a ranking factor? Thanks in advance for any reply, Kind regards,
Technical SEO | | Eric_Lifescript
Eric Darby1 -
Partner Sites
Hi All, Within our company we have a media group that publishes magazines and videos, the sites have footers that link to our shopping site, one of them has 118,459 links to one URL, domain authority 23, and the other 17,726 to seven URLs, domain authority 52, (there are some articles which link organically). My question is are these links because they're from identifiable companies with the same ownership worth keeping or are they detrimental? The site being linked to has a DA of 39 Cheers Stew
Technical SEO | | StewMcG0 -
Meta data & xml sitemaps for mobile sites when using rel="canonical"/rel="alternate" annotations
When using rel="canonical" and rel="alternate" annotations between mobile and desktop sites (rel="canonical" on mobile, pointing to desktop, and rel="alternate" on desktop pointing to mobile), what are everyone's thoughts on using meta data on the mobile site? Is it necessary? And also, what is the common consensus on using a separate mobile xml sitemap?
Technical SEO | | 4Ps0 -
Mobile or Responsive canonical question?
Hi guys We are in the process of expanding and are moving our site to magento enterprise. Today we met with a company pitching a seperate mobile site. While Im al for a mobile site in terms of look and user experience, from an seo point i dont believe and "m." domain is the best idea. However if we were to go with a mobile site, would adding canonical tags to the mobile urls pointing to the desktop urls be useful? For example m.trespass.co.uk/category-page has the canonical tag pointing to trespass.co.uk/category-page Im looking for someone who has direct experience wth this situation for one of their clients. Thanks Robert
Technical SEO | | Trespass0 -
Mobile Site & SEO
If i create a mobile site for a client will google crawl that site for mobile results or will it effect my rankings. My guess is no, just want to make sure. Obviously code will be different.
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
Site Structure question
when deciding the Site structure for a e-commerce site Is it better to keep everything mysite.com/widget.html or use categories like mysite.com/Gifts/widget.html
Technical SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0