How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Mobile Friendly

knowing something and truly understanding something. Even in a world of essentially limitless information at our fingertips, it’s so easy to hear something but not to take stock in it. This is one of those things you’ll want to take stock in. From the horse’s mouth: “today’s the day we begin globally rolling out our mobile-friendly update. We’re boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. Now searchers can more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming,…and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.” You can read more about the update here, but I wanted to talk just a little bit more about impact. So, while the sky isn’t falling, it’s certainly a wakeup call for your event website and pages. If they aren’t mobile friendly, you’re not going to rank as well – but only in mobile search results. While that might not sound bad, keep in mind that mobile traffic is almost 50% of all traffic. We at Ticketbud have noticed a stark increase in mobile purchases, so much so that we’ve added SMS ticket options for users to receive their tickets by text. The mobile update rolled out yesterday, which Business Insider called “Mobilegeddon”. Personally, I think they’re too Chicken Little and laid the fearmongering too thick. Here’s the good news: Even if your webpages take hits right now, you can always fix them later and bounce right back. And if your site was made recently (i.e. in the last 3-4 years), it’s likely already responsive so the need to freak out is even less. So ignore the talk and clickbait. Here’s the other good news: If you use Ticketbud as your event website to sell tickets online, you’re already mobile friendly. That’s right! Let’s walk you through a typical path. [caption id="attachment_22576" align="alignnone" width="185"] Ticketbud’s event website pages are already mobile-friendly![/caption] You’ll notice that Google calls out our site as being Mobile-friendly. Pretty neat, huh? Well you’ll see why here: [caption id="attachment_22577" align="alignnone" width="285"] Would you look at that- it’s just like it says on the tin.[/caption] You’ll notice this is in landscape, but it also works in portrait perfectly well. We’ve been well prepared for this eventuality of heavy mobile traffic and changed to a mobile friendly site even before we knew of the algorithm change. In reality, we did it to make things easier for event organizers to sell tickets online on mobile devices. So, if you’re an event organizer, make sure that your event site is mobile-friendly. The word you’ll want to look for is “responsive”. Responsive essentially means that the site’s dimensions change based on the type of screen so that tablets, mobile, and desktop can all use the site with equal ease. Ticketbud has been designed responsively so again, if you already use Ticketbud, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about – we got you covered! This won’t be the last of the mobile friendly updates, but it definitely is a signal of things to come. A maxim of the Stoics in Rome was “the obstacle is the way”. Don’t worry about your site being penalized, start thinking of how your site can actually take advantage of the new mobile algorithm. Think like this and you’ll begin to see a world of opportunity.]]]]> ]]>