{"id":2295,"date":"2015-08-15T18:42:47","date_gmt":"2015-08-15T18:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/\/?p=2295"},"modified":"2015-08-15T23:35:24","modified_gmt":"2015-08-15T23:35:24","slug":"does-making-a-website-mobile-friendly-have-a-universally-positive-impact-on-mobile-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/does-making-a-website-mobile-friendly-have-a-universally-positive-impact-on-mobile-traffic\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Making a Website Mobile-Friendly Have a Universally Positive Impact on Mobile Traffic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

From October of 2004 to April of 2015, Moz’s website remained entirely mobile-unfriendly. The experience on mobile, tablet, and desktop devices was the same, and if your screen was small, you had to pinch and zoom. Many of our readers complained and many more wondered why a technology company in the web marketing field would de-prioritize such a crucial element of user experience.<\/p>\n

\"moz-mobile-hate\"<\/p>\n

The answer in this case was a matter of prioritization and resources. Moz’s internal team that handles our front-end website had, over the prior few years, also taken on a massive number of other, crucial engineering responsibilities at the company including billing, cross-product navigation, SKU management, site\u00a0performance, and more.<\/p>\n

But, there was another problem as well – the data we had suggested a move to mobile might not have a big impact. For years, this blog (my personal one at moz.com\/rand) has been mobile-responsive, yet\u00a0the delta in traffic stats between it and the rest of our site\u00a0didn’t make an\u00a0overwhelming compelling case. Below is a screenshot\u00a0showing part of an email Cyrus sent to the team illustrating\u00a0the comparison (gotta love how data-informed he makes us):<\/p>\n

\"cyrus-mobile-answers\"<\/p>\n

As you can see, the data suggests that moving the rest of the site to mobile-friendly could produce a bump, just not a huge one. In 2014, we had a lot of passionate discussions about this, but eventually settled on punting the project. The other priorities were simply too important.<\/p>\n

In 2015, as Google ramped up the announcements about the upcoming “Mobilegeddon” change to their algorithm (which they said would strongly favor mobile-friendly content in mobile SERPs), we decided that from a reputation and traffic standpoint, we could no longer delay. On April 20th, just 1 day before “Mobilegeddon,” we made several high traffic sections of the site, including\u00a0the Moz Blog\u00a0and YouMoz (which receive\u00a0the lion’s share of mobile visits) mobile-friendly.<\/p>\n

We anticipated that, thanks to Google’s preferences, our readers’ strong feelings, and the overall growth of mobile-traffic, the impact would be fairly strong and positive…\u00a0What happened over the next 4 months, however, was quite surprising:<\/p>\n

\"moz-mobile-traffic\"<\/p>\n

That graph (and the annotations I made) seem to suggest that going mobile-friendly had a very mild, almost non-noticeable \u00a0impact on our mobile traffic.<\/p>\n

To be sure, though, I dug in a bit further. Below is a look at traffic just to the pages containing “moz.com\/blog,” all of which were updated on April 20th and received Google’s “mobile-friendly” label in the SERPs:<\/p>\n

\"moz-mobile-shift-comparison\"<\/p>\n

Those numbers look meager at best. It would seem that, since the change, Moz’s mobile readers haven’t engaged much more than they did on the old site that required pinching and zooming. That being said, there’s a number of other issues to consider:<\/p>\n