Whether it’s shopping, directions, entertainment, communication, or even ordering a ride, we spend so much of our day looking at a small device. We use our mobile phones for everything. While the capabilities of our smart phones are incredible, we are easily annoyed when they don’t work the way we want them to. When you visit a site or web app, you have the expectations that it will load and be functional, but when it fails to load due to slowness or other reasons and you can’t navigate the site or app, the user will drop off of the site and the chances of return are slim. You want to make sure that this isn’t the experience customers have when using their mobile phones to look at your website. In order to support as many of your customers as possible it is important that your auction site is mobile responsive.
Mobile Responsive vs. Mobile Friendly
Definition time! Many customers don’t think that there is a difference between mobile friendly and mobile responsive websites. While both types have to do with to viewing websites on a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, there is much more to these terms to dissect to understand the terminology.
A user encounters a mobile friendly site when they are presented with a smaller version of the exact website they would find if they were using a computer. This is a better option than not being mobile anything at all, however a traditional website can be hard to navigate and read on a much smaller screen. Plus, many of the features you have built into your beautiful site won’t be compatible with a phone and may glitch, creating a poor user experience.
A mobile responsive site is a version of a company’s website that has been specifically designed to be used on a phone or tablet. The site typically retains the same design features of the traditional website but has smaller images, larger buttons, and text that is easier to read. A mobile responsive site provides a much better user experience.
So why does it matter so much that my auction site is mobile responsive?
Convenience for Your Customers
We already talked about the amount of time that we spend on our phones – you have to assume that your customers will most likely be visiting your auction site from their phones and not just their computers. That being said, you want to make sure that you provide them with the best user experience possible, otherwise they will get frustrated and leave. And when customers leave, they don’t bid on your auctions. You want it to make it as easy as possible for your potential bidders to bid from their phones. Having a mobile responsive site takes their mobile needs into account and lets them bid with ease, driving up your final bid price.
Pairing with Proxy Bidding
Most likely you are already familiar with and use proxy bidding on your auction sites (if you need a quick refresher – read our blog post about proxy bidding here). Proxy bidding allows you to have additional bidders on the internet than you may not have had without it. After all, it lets people be out and about and living their lives while still bidding on your auction. And potentially while they are on the go they might decide that they want to check in on the auctions they are following or change their maximum bid. If you have a mobile responsive site these busy bidders will be able to quickly whip out their phones and update their bids as easily as updating their status. Having a mobile responsive site goes hand in had with offering proxy bidding and other mobile bidding capabilities.
Maintaining Your Brand
Your intended experience for your customers has to carry over onto mobile devices, not just on your traditional website. You have to maintain your brand wherever a user might interact with it. If your mobile site is beautiful and works great customers won’t even think about the fact they are using their phones. However, if you have a bad mobile site, it will reflect poorly on your company and may change the impression that a potential bidder has of you. Keeping a consistent level of excellence across your platform is the best way to make sure your brand image is strong.
Because Google Says So
The Google bots are always crawling websites, looking for things that will let one site rank higher over another. Well, having a mobile responsive site is one of those things! Showing Google that your company took the time to create a better experience for mobile users will get you a big stamp of approval and in turn allow you to rank higher. If Google is looking for mobile responsive sites, you bet you will want to have one for your company.
Your ability to provide a mobile responsive site to your customer will allow them to utilize your service and you to pass information on to them more effectively. Contact us if you need some help getting started with your own mobile responsive auction site!
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