Is Your YMCA Website Mobile-Friendly?
Rewind to ten years ago. I got my first cell phone because I was moving across state lines and thought, "Well, I guess I should get a cell phone to stay in touch my family." It was a "Chocolate" phone from Verizon - and man I thought I was cool ... the keypad slid out the bottom, for heaven's sake. I paid $275 and thought I had gotten a steal. One year later, watching a football game on TV, I saw a commercial from a major pizza chain that said, "Buy 2 Large pizzas, get a free Chocolate LG phone!" Ouch.
You know what that phone didn't do very well? Connect to the internet. Now if I wanted to send T9 texts all day long without looking, I could. But if I wanted to search "Lycos" (oh yeah, who remembers?) for the nearest YMCA in Kansas City, I was fresh out of luck. The truth is, 10 years ago it was hard to find information on the internet from a mobile device.
Now fast forward to present day. I - and it seems like everyone - use a mobile device to access information more than any other means in my life. It's funny, 5 years ago people debated the importance of a mobile presence with their website. Today, we hardly need to convince anyone of this fact. However, in case you're a non-believer, or even a bit interested in what the numbers are actually telling us:
There are now more "Mobile Users" in the world than there are "Desktop Users"
This might not be surprising to you - at least at first glance. But think about that. According to ComScore, in 2014 the number of people using Mobile devices ... smartphones, super computers in the pocket ... have now outnumbered the people sitting down at a computer or desktop screen to interact with tech. That's a massive statistic. And if you have not adjusted your YMCA association's focus to align with that statistic, you're missing a massive piece of the puzzle. But I digress ... we'll come back to that.
Google (and others) Rank your website based on how mobile-friendly you are.
That's right. Google made this decision a while back, and it shocked the web community, enough that they called the happenstance "Mobilegeddon". Developers can be a bit, dramatic, eh? I mean ... WE LOVE DEVELOPERS!
It's well known that Search Engines look at your website's ability to respond to different screen sizes before they spit out your page on their results. If you're spending money on Google AdWords, billboards, Twitter Cards, boosting Facebook Ads or any other digital avenue and your website looks terrible on a phone ... STOP. Stop it. Here's an article to read, and to send to your Executive Director / CEO to set up a meeting about making a change: http://searchengineland.com/mobilegeddon-beginning-not-ending-220512
More than 25% of your website users are using a mobile device.
Let's be honest, that number is probably low. Many YMCAs we work with are actually seeing OVER 50% of traffic coming from mobile. By the way, this is a very easy statistic to see in your Google Analytics. So what does that mean?
It means at least 1 out of every 4 people are getting their impression of your association from your website's presentation on a mobile screen.
If you just said "ooph" in your head, don't worry. You are not alone. "Recognizing there is a problem is the first step", right? "Yeah" you say, "Paying to fix it is the next 5 steps". That's true, too, but before we talk about that ...
You are Not Alone.
When SOCIY launched in January of 2016, we did quite a bit of research on YMCA websites. We had been doing them for about 5 years, but hadn't really dedicated the time to studying OTHER websites in the movement. So we did something crazy. We looked at every Y website. Maybe we missed 1 or 2, but we looked at all 500+ websites (not every Y has a website) in the last few months of 2015, finding out what the trends were, what was being done right, and what was being done wrong. Needless to say, we learned a lot. But in terms of mobile-friendly designs, we were shocked. 3 of every 4 websites we viewed were NOT responsive. 75% percent. Seventy. Five. Percent.
Ungood.
"OK! We need to be Mobile-Friendly. What's the cost!?"
It's always about money with you isn't it? Just kidding ... it's brass tacks. It usually comes down to one of two things (or both), Time & Money. Well there's some good and bad news. The good news is that it's not as much as you might think. There are website companies all over the US that would be more than willing to quote you a price on taking your current website and making it mobile-friendly, passing all the mobile tests & best practices. That's gonna cost anywhere from $2,000 - $5,000. If you have a massive site, maybe a bit more. But since it's mostly a change on the CSS coding / styling, it can usually be done without too much pain & suffering. Now if your website is built on a crazy, antiquated or deprecated technology, that cost can quickly go up. Here's the bad news ...
That money isn't going toward making you better. Not really. It's going toward making you modern. It's the same 'ol website, but now it passes the mobile test. It's not giving you anything new, or an "edge". So the question now becomes - and your team has to answer this for themselves - "Do we spend the money to make our current website Responsive (Mobile-friendly)? Or do we put that money toward a new website that will already be mobile-friendly?".
Great question. And only you can answer that.
"Is Our Website Mobile-Friendly?"
Give it a test - Google has a great tool to test your website in seconds. There is another website that will test if your site is responsive, and give you a visual aid on what your site looks like on different screens & devices. Both are free:
Hopefully you're seeing the importance of a mobile-friendly website as a YMCA. If we can point you in the right direction, or if you'd like to talk about how our platform can help you take this step in the right direction, we'd love to connect.
It would be fun for you to send a screenshot of your "Am I Responsive" screens after you've tested your site. Send it to us in a message via Twitter or Facebook and who knows, you may end up with a cool treat (no tricks!). ** get it? October? Yeah, it was bad **
How about we start things off!? Here are a few of our SOCIY sites (YMCA of Austin and Randolph YMCA):
