The internet is a mobile- first world now, and your website needs to embrace this shift to avoid missing out on opportunities. By prioritizing your mobile experience with user friendly design principles and an always on-the-go approach to content, you can reap bigger rewards from referral channels and compete more effectively for visibility.
There’s no understating just how much of an impact smartphone devices have had upon the online landscape. Seventy-seven percent of U.S. adults (?250 million) now own a smartphone, according to Pew Research, and only 17 percent of people own a cell phone but not a smartphone. Even more interesting, there are 6.5 million more smartphone owners than desktop/laptop owners, and 65 million people depend entirely on their smartphones for internet access.
The shift from large, stationary computers to pocket-sized touchscreens has had a huge impact on not just website design but also how online content is consumed in general. Understanding just how much the mobile first mindset has affected the website design process can help your business learn how to build a better website that’s aware of mobile’s center stage presence in our modern tech culture.
What Does Mobile First Web Design Mean?
The term “mobile first” may sound like a buzzword or industry jargon, but it’s actually quite descriptive despite its simplistic name. People use the term “mobile first” because it instantly separates their design philosophy from older, non-ideal approaches to mobile website design and optimization.
To explain the differences in design philosophy, let’s start with a history lesson. Our journey through time begins in the late 1990s, when pocket-sized devices like organizers and cell phones first began to have internet connectivity.
The thing about the internet back then was that it could be janky and unreliable. People were still figuring out how to make it work properly across a range of computers and connection types. Few people had home access to a reliable and relatively speedy internet connection.
As you might imagine, cell phones at the time endured this struggle a hundredfold. Their processors were weak, display resolutions were minimal and you could never count on a sustained connection.
To compensate, web designers would build two versions of a website. One version would be the fully-featured design intended to run on a standard desktop or laptop computer. Then, a mobile website team would strip down this design as much as possible to its barest components. That version would be loaded when a mobile signal was detected.
At first, most early mobile internet adopters would be forced to navigate to a different URL with an “m.___” added to the domain, such as “m.yourbusinesssite.com” instead of the normal “yourbusinesssite.com” they would find when searching from a desktop computer.
Then, developers and devices advanced so that the exact same URL could load different content for mobile versus desktop/laptop users. This approach was called “dynamic serving.”
Now, most developers have moved onto “responsive design,” which uses the same HTML code for all users. Instead of serving up a few different tiers of content, all content scales automatically. That way, people with different device screen sizes can automatically have the best usability.
During the transition from separate URLs to dynamic serving to responsive design, overall mobile internet use surpassed desktop laptop traffic. In response, designers and developers stopped treating mobile websites as an afterthought or something that is built off of a secondary version of their site. Instead, they considered mobile first, and their designs for larger screens were advanced off of those basic blueprints.
“Progressive Advancement” Versus “Graceful Degradation”
Another way to conceptualize the difference between “mobile first” as opposed to “mobile sometime later” is through the above two terms.
“Graceful degradation” was the old standard operating mode for designers. Their desktop/laptop website was the development priority, and it’s what most of their resources went towards. Then, once most or all of the desktop-focused design was complete, a team would try to scale down the website’s size and complexity while sacrificing as little of the original experience as possible.
In other words: they degraded the original design as gracefully as they could. Compromise was inevitable, and many website visitors could feel like they were being served a second tier experience.
“Progressive advancement,” on the other hand, refers to that approach in reverse. The design team comes up with the perfect set of design principles and layout ideas built around a small screen. This design is optimized so that mobile phone users across a broad range of screen sizes and processing powers could still have an amazing experience. Then, a desktop/laptop team would consider how to expand that core design and take advantage of larger screens, more precise navigation (aka non-touchscreen controls) and heftier processing power.
Mobile users get two main benefits out of progressive advancement:
The website was built from the ground up to look great and be usable on mobile
They never feel as if they are having to make sacrifices to view a website on their mobile device; the larger site version just adds bells and whistles
A further consequence of progressive advancement is that most of the creativity and effort behind a website goes into the mobile experience. Instead of thinking, “how do we change this menu so that people without a mouse pointer can actually use the darn thing?” the team says, “what would a menu perfect for touchscreen controls look like?”
The consequences of such a mindset switch are huge, and they can have a direct impact on your bottom line.
How a Mobile First Website Approach Benefits Your Business
We’ve talked at length about how the mobile first approach evolved over time and how it makes life better for the average smartphone user. But what about how these changes bring your business more opportunities and more money?
Here are a few of the biggest benefits you’ll notice when you make the switch:
Better Search Engine Ranking and Visibility
In April of 2015, Google decided to finally put their foot down regarding websites that ignored the needs of mobile users. From that point on, websites that met their mobile-friendly design guidelines would get a ranking boost for all mobile searches.
The change effectively punished sites that weren’t able to keep up with their expectations. There wasn’t a huge penalty, but the difference was enough to create a gap that potentially lead to lost leads and revenue.
Ignoring the needs or convenience of mobile users can therefore literally drive customers away from your sales funnel and into your competitor’s arms.
A Mobile First Approach to Design and Content Now Means a Softer Learning Curve
Make no mistake: mobile audiences are the dominant driving force behind all online innovation and evolution. Data usage and website visits across the entire internet have gone up—both per-person and overall. Yet, traffic from tablets and desktop/laptop devices has declined.
This scenario tells you that smartphones are the main driving force behind growing online use. Our obsession with social media and browsing on-the-go is changing the way we approach the internet as a whole.
All of these changes are important now and will only become more important in years to come. If your business keeps kicking the can down the road, you could quickly find that your strategies are hopelessly dated, leading fewer opportunities and lower conversion rates.
Make the switch now. Start thinking “mobile first” with everything you do, because smartphones are no longer the sideshow; they’re the main event.
Blogging frequency is somewhat of a sticky topic in the digital marketing world. Some people have hard and fast beliefs about how “you have to post seven blogs per week or EVERYTHING WILL EXPLODE!” Others only post whenever they feel like it, which can be as unpredictable as it sounds.
In truth, both camps are wrong. Posting on a regular schedule is absolutely essential. It helps you build audiences, stay organized and discipline yourself to continually push out worthwhile content.
On the other hand, posting too frequently leads to diminishing returns. Posting every day, for example, can mean that a fair chunk of your blogs never get read. When promoting your blogs on social media, the algorithms may also be much more likely to pass over your umpteenth blog promotion for the week.
So what is the happy medium? How often is the right blogging frequency for you?
The answer is a resounding: “It depends.” The circumstances surrounding your business and the unique qualities of your audience both dictate the right number of times to publish a blog post each month. Your marketing goals also come into play, especially if you intend to use your blog to increase your search engine rank or support lead generation.
On average, posting once or twice a week should hit the “just fine” mark. But if you want to know how to calculate exactly how often you need to publish in order to benefit your objectives and audience needs, keep reading.
Why Posting Every Day Isn’t Smart or Necessary
First, let’s get some reasons out of the way for why it’s pure overkill to post a new blog every single day.
For starters, you’re going to wear out your audiences. If they happen to follow you on social media or subscribe to your email list, a daily promotion talking about your latest in a slew of new posts is going to get under their skin really quickly.
Even among audience members who absolutely love to read your content, posting every day is too much for them to keep up with. They’ll inevitably fall behind, meaning not every blog gets the attention it deserves. This may be less of a problem if, say, you’re an outlet with millions of readers, but the average website only gets so much attention for its blog per week.
Similarly, social media algorithms may begin to think that people don’t like engaging with your content. The more of your posts that end up with an extremely low engagement rate, the more likely the algorithm is to decide that you aren’t worth showing up on someone’s newsfeed.
Earning comments and engagement serves as “social proof” that looking at your content is worthwhile. It’s the same thing as seeing a line outside a bar; people think “that’s gotta be the place to be!” Popularity brings more people.
But when you have no engagement, it kinda makes people steer clear. You start to look like the one kid sitting by himself at lunch. Someone might feel bad for you, but engaging at that point could be social suicide.
So don’t overdo it! Any way you slice it, it’s going to make your brand feel like a social outcast. It will also mean that you’re wasting resources in the process on superfluous blogs that hurt, rather than help, your marketing goals.
The Importance of Consistency
In addition to realizing that there’s a blogging frequency line you shouldn’t cross, recognize that consistent publishing benefits your blog performance for several reasons.
One of the biggest reasons consistency helps your readership is that it means you’re predictable. People know that if they visit your blog or check out your social feeds, they’ll see something new every so often. Even if you prefer to only publish blogs once or twice a month, people can anticipate when the next post will drop as long as you release them on a consistent calendar.
Consistency also forces you to be disciplined about blogging. Search engine optimization (SEO) takes several months to begin working. Search engines need to be able to index a consistent volume of content regularly over weeks and weeks before they begin to consider linking to your domain. They also seek out fresh content, meaning that what helped you rank last year could quickly get stale and overtaken this year.
Publishing on a regular schedule therefore ensures that you are constantly planting seeds for a sizeable readership and SEO. Each new blog helps your previous efforts take root, and just as a piece of content begins to become less effective, a whole new crop is ready to take its place.
One last benefit of consistent blogging frequency worth mentioning is that it forces you to plan. If you have a set number of blogs to publish each week or each month, you’re strongly incentivized to create a content calendar.
You may also be more inclined to plan out your topics. Preferably, you are bookmarking interesting things you’ve seen throughout the week to develop a content idea queue. As you place these ideas on your calendar, you can determine how to have a variety of topics that keep your blog interesting while covering your desired keywords.
Determining Your Ideal Blogging Frequency
Now that you know why blogging on a consistent basis—but not every day—are the golden rules, here is how you can figure out the best blogging frequency to meet your needs.
Define your goals and key metrics to measure
Form a hypothesis for how often you think you should post to meet these goals
Post at your hypothesized frequency for at least two to three months to establish benchmark data
Hypothesize how you might improve your key metrics by adjusting your posting frequency
Measure the difference averaged over a few weeks
Go back to step four and continue experimenting to optimize
Notice that step six implies that this is a never-ending process. The perfect posting frequency for you now may change in a few months.
As for how to make an educated guess for how often you should post, you can use some of the following decision-making criteria.
Current volume of content
Blogs with little to no existing content should push themselves until they have at least a few dozen articles under their belt. Don’t publish every day, but don’t be afraid to publish far more often than you intend to, just so you can build out your content with a healthy backlog.
Current readership volume
If you have thousands of readers for every blog post, you should always see what happens when you post slightly more often. Chances are great that your priority metrics and views will only go up.
If you don’t have very many readers yet, posting more often could risk dividing their attention. Experiment with shifting days around and adding slightly more posts per month rather than assuming more is always going to be better.
Best traffic sources
Your main source of traffic—or the channel you intend to use as your main source—matters a great deal for how often you post.
Neil Patel points out how blogs like Moz that produce high quality content can depend on new backlinks and search engine referrals bringing people to their content for months, sometimes years.
On the other hand, blogs like Buzzfeed, that earn most of their traffic from social media, have to “feed the beast” with constant new articles and updates. For blogs that get lots of viral shares and engagement via social media, sometimes posting multiple times a day can actually be a strategy that works!
Your own capacity and resources to create blogs
This is an incredibly important point that can all but negate everything else we’ve already suggested. Specifically: only write as much as you can. Otherwise, you are going to get burnt out and start publishing sub-par work.
The best way to avoid burnout is to have enough polished content that you are at least a month ahead. That way, you can take a break if you aren’t feeling inspired or motivated. You may also need to find outside help from a content marketing agency or a freelance writer.
In the end, just listen to your brain when it comes to how positive you feel about blogging. Developing a schedule and a content calendar can make you more productive, but it can’t make you an amazing writer every time you sit down at the keyboard.
“If you post only once every two months, but the content is truly awesome, you will be much more successful than someone publishing crappy posts every day,” reflects SmartBlogger—and we couldn’t agree more!
WordPress 4.9 is out as of November 15, 2017! This is great news. I always look at a new WordPress version as sort of the big gift on Christmas morning, and this one is no exception.
WordPress is already one of the most solid and versitile platforms out there for website design, and the new features in every version keeps making it better and better.
As with all version updates, I will be installing it on my own sites first to test and learn, and then roll it out for clients and new websites.
Jewel has finally got their act (or should i say ‘Acts’) together.
This nightclub in Manchester (Canal St. is off of Granite St.) New Hampshire is under new ownership, has new sound, new policies, new look and and new vibe (GREAT) altogether.
After attending a few of the national acts that have come through (Buckcherry, Puddle of Mudd) I have to say this is the best sounding club I have ever been in. The staff was friendly and the atmosphere is perfect for a night of live music. Manchester has needed an intimate venue like this for a long time. Don’t get me wrong…I loved the intimacy of Mad Bob’s, but it was REALLY small.
Fear not, it does NOT replace local Manchester favorites such as Shaskeen, Strange Brew, or other smaller live music venues. Jewel ADDS another option, one that was missing, for small and large nationals to play in, where normally a fan would have to go to Portsmouth or Hampton beach to see. It basically put Manchester on the map for touring bands.
Jewel nightclub is about 400 capacity (Im guessing) and it’s a great place to see national bands in a small setting, and all the local bands that play there sound great as well.
So we have launched their website anew, in hopes to keep up with a growing fan base of rock, country and comedy fans. Check them out at http://www.jewelnh.com.
So, after a few years of letting it slide, I’ve finally decided to update our website! Hope you like it. This WordPress design features a mobile ready, actually mobile responsive, design. Try it on your mobile phone!
All web designs going forward will be developed on a mobile responsive platform, giving you a perfect looking site on any mobile or pad device. This will help with the search engines, as well as give your mobile users the experience they deserve. Read more about this important feature here.
Responsive Design
A responsive web design ‘shrinks’ as you re-size your browser, keeping the same content you have in place. This will keep you from having to update 2 websites (if you have a mobile website). The images shrink as well as content can be altered. For example, you may want to put a ‘Click to Call’ button at the top of the mobile view.
I hope you like this new design, and if you are a current client and would like to redesign into the mobile world, please give me a call at 603-485-4485.
Blogging frequency is somewhat of a sticky topic in the digital marketing world. Some people have hard and fast beliefs about how “you have to post seven blogs per week or EVERYTHING WILL EXPLODE!” Others only post whenever they feel like it, which can be as unpredictable as it sounds.
First, let’s get some reasons out of the way for why it’s pure overkill to post a new blog every single day.
In addition to realizing that there’s a blogging frequency line you shouldn’t cross, recognize that consistent publishing benefits your blog performance for several reasons.
After attending a few of the national acts that have come through (Buckcherry, Puddle of Mudd) I have to say this is the best sounding club I have ever been in. The staff was friendly and the atmosphere is perfect for a night of live music. Manchester has needed an intimate venue like this for a long time. Don’t get me wrong…I loved the intimacy of Mad Bob’s, but it was REALLY small.
