Are you paying attention to the readability of your content?

If your focus is on technical terminology and a beautiful page design, then the chances are that readability is a little further down your priority list. Unfortunately, it might be the element of quality content you need to master before you find success online. After all, if readers can’t enjoy what you’ve written, you can’t expect them to stay on your page and remain engaged.

What Is Readability?

In essence, readability is the quality of writing and language use that makes it easy to read, as well as understand.

Wikipedia expands on this concept by detailing metrics observed in an effort to measure readability. These include…

“…speed of perception, perceptibility at a distance, perceptibility in peripheral vision, visibility, the reflex blink technique, rate of work (e.g., speed of reading), eye movements, and fatigue in reading.”

Although there are many formulas to score readability, few of them factor in the design, organization, visual elements, content, and purpose of a text.

What Affects The Readability Of Your Writing?

Readability takes into account reading ease, your writing style, the quality of your language, and the level of reading comprehension. However, it also factors in the design and presentation of your writing. While these latter elements technically fall into the category of legibility, they aid in improving the readability of a text as they influence user experience. How the words on your page look can affect the speed at which a reader is able to work through a piece of text. Although you can’t control every aspect of readability, there are some things you can do to enhance a reader’s enjoyment.

Why Is Readability So Important?

The reality is that very few people read web pages word by word these days. Instead, they prefer to scan for words and phrases that help them get the gist of what you’re saying without wasting precious time. It’s for this reason that readability has serious implications for the way you structure your content marketing messages.

When we read, our eyes don’t move across a page smoothly. Rather, our eyes make discreet jumps from word to word, fixating on each one for approximately 200-250 milliseconds. While this is happening, there’s a cognitive process taking place that allows us to recognize the shape of a word and then translate it into something that has meaning. When we scan or speed read, we expand our eye span to incorporate clusters of words so that there are fewer eye movements.

Good readability ensures readers are able to scan quickly, process the piece of text they’re seeing, and then understand its meaning. As a result, readability should be a priority if you hope to influence as many people as possible with your message.

18 Tactics to Help Get Your Content Read

To ensure your content is not only easy to read, bust also remains competitive within a noisy online environment, here are 18 best practices for improving the readability of your writing:

1. Use a good font size

While you don’t want your text to be too big, you also don’t want it to be too small, as it can lead to eyestrain. Thankfully, modern web design not only caters to a variety of devices and display resolutions, but it also allows for a flexible, scalable approach that adapts to personal browser settings. Use percentages rather than absolute sizes when setting the size of your fonts. 

2. Maintain a reasonable line height

The line-height property establishes the amount of white space above and below each line of text. Also called leading, a good line height provides clarity by ensuring the shapes of letters and words are recognizable. Although your line spacing will depend on your font size, the following example shows you how leading can hamper readability.

Be careful not to provide too much line height as it makes your use of vertical page space inefficient.

3. Use a clean and simple font style

There’s no denying that font styles can get complicated, resulting in bad design choices that destroy the legibility of a text. Even in cases where the most legible typeface is used, a font’s creative elements might not lend itself to easy reading.

As a result, you should avoid styles that are too edgy, fancy, or decorative. Differentiate between headlines and the paragraphs that follow, but make sure you use a typeface that’s compatible with good web design and user experience. Consider using sans serif fonts like Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, Verdana, Trebuchet, or Tahoma as they lack small finishing strokes that easily blur together. Alternatively, you can try a reasonably designed serif font with as little distinct flair as possible.

4. Use short sub-headlines

Since people tend to skim content, it’s crucial to use short, meaningful headlines to break up monotonous text patterns. Besides making a web page easier to read, sub-headlines act as a teaser and indicate that the following paragraphs contain a new idea. Ideally, a sub-headline should be bold and slightly larger than the content below it.

5. Be smart about paragraphs

Most readers find that large blocks of text are hard to digest. Thankfully, chunking can help alleviate this problem. Besides adding necessary white space for improved scannability and readability, paragraphs give structure to your written work.

Here are some things you should know about creating smart paragraphs:

• While conventions for length vary, paragraphs should be adapted according to medium, subject, and audience. Ideally, a paragraph should be no less than three sentences and no more than six.

• Try not to add more than three paragraphs under a single heading.

• Make sure each paragraph contains a single, developed idea.

• Use connectives like “Nonetheless,” “Besides,” “However,” “Furthermore,” and “Alternatively” to unify your writing between and within paragraphs.

• Paragraph shape can vary depending on the text you’re chucking together. While APA guidelines call for an indent on the first line of text and no white space between paragraphs, block paragraphs are more appropriate for readability on the web.

6. Keep your writing simple and consistent

Concise, simple, and focused writing keeps your message clear. Jargon throws readers off while inconsistency confuses them. As a result, you should keep your sentences short and get to the point quickly. Bear in mind that your tone and use of punctuation also affects the readability of your content.

7. Use bullet points and numbered lists

Bullet points and lists grab attention, create white space, help structure content, and aid in the consumption of information quickly. All of these benefits contribute to easy reading and better comprehension.

8. Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters

A mixture of capital and lowercase letters is easier to read than sub-headlines and content that consists purely of uppercase text. The difference in letter height assists with scanning while a combination of cases gives words shape. In turn, readers recognize words quickly, which makes for easier reading.

9. Apply style choices appropriately

Using italics, making certain words bold, or highlighting keywords can help emphasize the information you’re trying to deliver. However, you need to consider these style choices carefully as they can help with scannability, but hinder readability if there are too many.

10. Avoid poor contrast

In addition to annoying readers and weakening engagement levels, low contrast text can cause eye fatigue. This is especially true for readers who are visually impaired. Therefore, you should think about readability first and visual appeal second. If you opt against classic color combinations that include darker text on a lighter background, be sure to consider things like color brightness.

Examples of high and low color contrasts

You might also want to think about building typographic contrast into your headlines and sub-headlines by making them noticeably different to the type you’ve used for your paragraph text. A larger or darker text for headlines is ideal for guiding readers through your content.

11. Avoid busy backgrounds

There’s nothing like a noisy background to distract visitors and hinder readability. Case in point:

If your website or blog has a creative background image, make certain that the layer behind your text doesn’t interfere with the way words look or an individual’s ability to read them.

12. Leverage images with captions

Breaking text patterns with visual stimuli like images can make a piece of content easier to read, as well as help readers remain focused. Captions on images are also a popular reference point for scanners since an individual’s eyes tend to drift down naturally when seeing an image. Therefore, you should not only consider images that support your text, but you should also include persuasive, interesting captions that compel people to read further.

13. Avoid awkward text wraps

Wrapping text around images or other elements often causes text to break awkwardly. This interrupts a reader’s rhythmic eye movement and interferes with an individual’s scanning speed. Text wraps also create blank lines, thin columns of text, and issues with hyphenation. If you do choose to use a text wrap, make sure it lends itself to a well-balanced design and that it enhances readability rather than hinders it.

14. Use an inverted pyramid

If you’re unfamiliar with the inverted pyramid, then look at this eye tracking research published by the Nielson Norman Group.

Eye tracking study: Heatmaps from three different websites indicate where readers focused most. Gray areas failed to attract fixations while red areas were looked at the most.

If you scour the web, you’ll find many different opinions regarding the inverted pyramid as a style of writing. Since most readers search for the content they read, the belief is that they’re already interested in what you have to say. However, it’s crucial to realize that the hook and setup for a good piece of writing needs to be at the top of the page where a reader’s eyes naturally go when viewing content. Other readability factors and your call to action won’t matter if you can’t get people to move past the headline and first few paragraphs.

15. Keep lines of text a reasonable length

Long lines of text that travel across an entire web page are frowned upon when it comes to reading comfort. They’re hard on the eyes, and they cause fatigue. You also increase the chance of readers losing their place. Although you don’t necessarily want multiple columns, you should at least use a single column to control the width of your text. Ideally, you want to aim for 50-60 characters before the sentence breaks off onto the next line.

16. Avoid clutter

Clutter can affect the readability of your text, as well as dilute its relevancy. A clean, professional, and streamlined look will prevent distractions and improve a reader’s experience.

17. Make sure links look like links

Although there are many conventions for making a link look like a link, the important thing here is to use them wisely when assessing the readability of a page. Too many links can be distracting, affecting a person’s retention of information and drawing readers away from your article. Links placed appropriately within your text can improve scannability. Words or phrases that are underlined but aren’t clickable can frustrate readers and decrease user experience. Therefore, you should pay attention to your linking habits and only use links when necessary.

18. Check your text with a test

Readability tests and standards can help ensure your writing style meets the reading level of your target audience. While formulas and scoring measures may differ, these tools provide similar results in terms of understanding the reading ease of your content. Most word processing software contains built-in readability tests these days, but you can always search for testing tools online to check your text.

Common readability tests include:

• Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease: This formula produces a result that’s measured on a scale of 1-100. The higher the score, the easier the content is to read.

• Flesch Kincaid Grade Level: Results are given according to academic grade level, with a 7th-8th grade reading level being a recommended standard.

• SMOG Index: This test also scores text based on a grade level between 1 and 12.

• Cloze test: This formula offers a great way to measure readability and reading comprehension. You should aim for a score of 60% or more.

• Gunning Fog Index: While this scoring scale starts at 1, complex text can reach index readings in the high teens. However, you should aim for an index reading of 8 or less for a universal understanding of a specific piece of content.

Online tools you might want to try:

• The Readability Test Tool
• Readability Formulas
• Readbility-Score.com
• Online-Utility.org
• Content Manager by Raven Tools
• Juicy Studio
• Edit Central

The great thing about many of these tools is that they allow you to measure content you’ve already published. When the option is available, simply insert the relevant URL into the search field, click the accompanying button, and then wait for the tool to work its magic. This gives you an opportunity to find blog posts or pages of content that require improvements in the readability department. As you practice with these tools, you’ll find it becomes easy to write content at a comfortable reading level.

Conclusion

Effective communication is essential for content marketing success. The way you write and structure your content influences the way readers consume your message. By practicing design literacy and making readability a priority, you ensure your target audience enjoys your content and receives your key message even when they’re simply scanning.

How do you ensure your content is easy to read? Share your tips and thoughts on this topic in the comment section below.

In the ever-challenging quest to reign as king of the Internet, businesses and online marketers are constantly searching for ways to captivate and connect with their audience members. Experts encourage the creation of engaging content, but that can be a complex undertaking if you’re not sure what that type of content should look like.

In this post, we break down 10 key elements of remarkable content that’s destined to be remembered, as well as provide examples you can use as inspiration.

1. Content That Educates

Let’s face it: you’re bound to remember a massive gold billboard with a fun, interesting fact in raised lettering. Science World excels at creative and educational content that attracts attention and gets the brain juices flowing. Check out a Google image search of their ads for more inspiration. You might want to create tutorials in a visually appealing format like an infographic, tackle an engaging how-to blog post that provides the kind of insight readers won’t find anywhere else on the web, or reveal tips, secrets, tactics, and strategies that turn conventional thinking on its head.

2. Content That Tells a Story or Takes Audiences on a Journey

Combine a relevant song, great animation, and a plotline about the goodness of old-school farming and you have a recipe for success. From how it all started to behind-the-scenes footage, the creative marketing team at Chipotle appears to have a knack for telling the brand’s story. Are you taking your audience on a journey that tells them about the birth of your brand or what you’re currently doing to improve your products?

3. Content That Encourages

Whether it’s to be brave, never give up hope, or do something to make someone else’s life better, the message your content sends can be encouraging and powerful. With nearly four million views for this upload alone, Pfizer hits the nail on the head with a tearjerker that encourages us to work together for a healthier world.

4. Content with an Element of Surprise or an Unexpected Ending

There’s nothing like a good plot twist or unexpected ending to captivate the mind. This one is not only sweet and memorable, but it’ll make you want to pick up the phone and call your dad. Not before downing some Robinsons double concentrated orange juice, of course.

5. Content That Offers a Different Perspective or Confirms a Belief

With more than 750,000 people watching live online, an additional 100,000 views in the following days, loads of press coverage, tons of user-generated content, and follow-up merchandise like DVDs and video downloads, many would agree that the “Creation vs Evolution Debate” was a raging viral success. All it took was two different opinions and a controversial topic.

While there’s no denying you can find steadier ground in terms of subject matter, adding a new perspective to an industry-related conversation can be a great way to generate buzz for your brand. Entice a few industry experts with differing view points, set up a Google Hangout, and let your content do the rest. If you’re not comfortable with a live audience, record a video or write a great blog post that explains your perspective or beliefs on a particular topic.

6. Content That Brings On the Feels

Okay, so we’re cheating a little here because we’re not just talking about one piece of content. We’re talking about hundreds of YouTube stars who spend their waking moments creating content that makes an impact on millions of people every day. They share their lives, they share their creativity, and they connect with viewers. Most importantly, they make people care about them.

It’s because of this emotional investment that their new vlogumentary is geared for success. The trailer alone hits all the right triggers. While these YouTubers haven’t necessarily established business brands, their personal brands have enough pulling power to attract promotional deals and other revenue-generating opportunities–all because they make people feel.

Start thinking about ways you can produce content that evokes the right emotions. Consider a piece that incites action, raises awareness, reminds people that they’re beautifully unique, shows the underdog winning, throws out a challenge, or reminds people they can achieve anything. If you can do that, you’ll soon have people invested in you, your brand, and your products or service offerings.

7. Content That Induces Laughter

Just when you think you’re watching the trailer for a new horror film this happens…

Although this ad is fairly old, Dirt Devil has managed to rake in more than 30.3 million plays on Vimeo, as well as millions more on social media sites like YouTube. Their commercial parody of The Exorcist may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but people are still commenting on its ability to incite giggles more than two years down the line. A successful piece of content? We’ll let you decide.

8. Content That Entertains

Besides creating awesome educational content that captivates audiences worldwide, the Discovery Channel develops plenty of interactive content that they heavily promote across their marketing platforms. The screenshot you see above is one of the games the brand has developed around its programming. They also publish trivia sheets and post polls that generate good feedback and entertain followers.

9. Content that’s Unexpected

AXE campaigns are usually centered on the “ladies’ man,” so when the brand breaks away from its usual style, people tend to notice. Surprise your fans and take a risk. Create content that successfully catches people off guard, and you might just have a viral hit on your hands.

10. Content That Reinforces the Value of Life

“Help save the birthdays.” That’s a heavy reminder that life is short—and in some cases, shorter than we ever expect. Most of us will always want another moment with a loved one, another milestone to celebrate, and another day to see dreams come true. The ad is only 15 seconds long, but the American Cancer Society does a great job of reinforcing the value of life while encouraging us to donate to a worthy cause.

Which elements would you add to our list? Have you recently seen a memorable piece of content you’d include as an example? We’d love to hear your take on what makes a great piece of content so join the conversation by leaving your comment below.

From tips on how to improve time management to advice on editing your manuscript, I’ve covered a lot about the subject of writing in the last couple of weeks. However, I haven’t mentioned how to deal with most scribes’ worst enemy – writer’s block. You can manage your time wisely and set yourself up for writing success, but when you experience a mental block, it can throw your whole day into a tailspin. If you’re desperate to learn how to overcome writer’s block, I have some tips that can help you open up the floodgates of words, phrases, paragraphs, lists and more once again.

#1 – Change the Setting

Writer’s block has a tendency to set in when you get too accustomed to a routine. If you’ve been writing from the same chair at the same desk for years, it might be time to find a different spot to work. Try taking your laptop to the coffee shop around the corner, or even the public library. Simply relocating to a different room in your house can work wonders, too. A change in scenery might be just the thing to break you out of your slump.

#2 – Engage Physically to Improve Mentally

I’ve written about the importance of physical activity before, but I can’t stress enough how crucial it is to your mental performance. When you move around, you cause your heart to pump blood more vigorously throughout your body, which has the effect of stimulating your brain. If writer’s block has got you down, a simple walk around the block or a bike ride could get the ideas flowing again.

#3 – Inspiration From Music

Although it might not be convenient for you to listen to tunes on the job, music is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to unlocking your brain. The combination of melodies, rhythmic patterns and words can help your mind reconfigure the way it thinks, thus getting you unstuck from your writer’s block. If you’re having trouble getting the ideas to flow, listen to a few tracks on shuffle mode and you’ll be re energized in no time.

#4 – Accomplish the Toughest Tasks First

This is one of the key tips for managing your time wisely, but it’s also helpful if you’re wondering how to overcome writer’s block. Begin your day by tackling your toughest projects, and the remainder of your work will come more easily. If you have trouble getting good ideas committed to your hard drive, simply do the best you can – you can always come back to the tough projects later to improve them once you’re feeling the flow again.

#5 – Stay Consistent as a Writer

Do you write every day, or do you take days off in between your projects and assignments? If you’re not consistent in your writing, it’s much easier for writer’s block to become an issue. By writing every single day, you keep your writing muscles in shape, and you stave off the specter of writer’s block more easily. Even if you simply write a few sentences on your days off, you will notice an improvement in the ease with which you accomplish your work.

#6 – You Are What You Eat

This is one of the world’s oldest cliches, but it’s also true. You are quite literally made of the foods and beverages you consume, so if you subsist on a steady diet of junk food, your brain and body will perform accordingly. If writer’s block is something you’ve been struggling with, try substituting fruits and vegetables for chips and candies. You’ll notice a boost in energy, and you’ll also find that your brain becomes sharper.

#7 – Take a Nap

This tip probably seems antithetical to your goal of becoming more productive, but it might be the most powerful piece of advice on this list. If you’re just not coming up with the ideas you need to complete your writing assignments, you probably need to recharge your brain. A simple, 20-minute nap can realign your perspective and give your brain the energy boost it needs to get great ideas flowing once again.

Do you suffer from writer’s block? What do you do to get your ideas flowing again? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

As SEO or web marketers, our jobs are to promote web properties and get them maximum exposure to an audience that is increasingly spending more and more time online. We read posts and articles every day about the 5 greatest tips for driving traffic to a site or the 10 best ways to optimize your site. We read about thought leaders in the industry and how their tactics have increased traffic rates by hundreds of percentage points. Writing SEO content helps make a site more visible in search. So, its no surprise that when we go to design a website or write content or do anything else related to this field, we tend to think about what’s best for search or what’s best for a bot crawling the web, and not much about the users that are searching for good information.

Writing Good Content is SEO

I have young children who are starting to ask complicated questions about the world. They want to know how fish breathe under water or they ask how far the sun is from the earth. It’s probably no surprise that I do not own an encyclopedia or any kind of reference material on these sorts of things, so I do what I have been doing for the past decade. I do the same thing when I need to know a phone number for a local business or when I need to know the answer to a complicated math question — I go to the Internet and search for the answers that I need. In the back of my mind, I know that there is always the potential that what I’m reading could very well be the most inaccurate piece of information out there, because anyone with a computer and enough ambition can publish content online. For those who consistently write or otherwise produce content that is valuable, accurate, informative and otherwise “good,” that is the content that travels to the top of rankings. The pages that focused on writing SEO content may enjoy good rankings as well, but their chances are smaller for staying at the top of the charts for long.

A Balance Between Optimization and Quality Content

Now that I have prefaced this post with a phenomenon endemic to the modern Internet, let’s talk more about how we balance good content with the notion that it must be configured in a way to make it easily found online.

Writing for Users Should be the Primary Goal for SEO

I have discovered both in my own experience as well as from other leaders in this industry that the main goal of any kind of marketing online is to be helpful. In terms of content, the main goal should be, first and foremost, to produce a quality, well-researched piece. Think of those people out there searching for information about how far the sun is from the earth and how they depend on content producers to get it right. So, when you go to write your content, ask yourself if what you produce would be something that others could depend on.

Here are some tips for getting that good content

• Primary research (things you discover on your own)
  • This means interviews, studies, trials or surveys. Data gleaned from these resources can be very valuable.
  • Secondary research (standing on someone else’s shoulders)
    • Researching information others have produced is also an acceptable way to generate good content. Whatever you are writing about, find resources like trade journals, published studies and papers, other well-researched blog posts, articles from authoritative sources or statistical information from authoritative sources.

The idea here is that before the Internet, those who published content only did so because it was both high-caliber and accurate. Now that the barriers to publishing content have been eliminated by the Internet, it’s much easier to publish (and for the public to consume) misinformation. Follow the same steps to the end goal that traditional content distributors did in order to make your website an authority in its niche and deliver good content to users.

Writing for Search Engines Should be The Secondary Goal

Writing great content is all well and good, but if you want it to get found, you must do some search engine optimization. This is the trickier part of the whole SEO profession. There is not really a set of rules that says, “place your keywords here, here and here and you will rank number one” — “Build your site according to this template, and the traffic gods will smile upon you.” It’s really a science and an art form. As far as your onsite optimization goes, these tips should help to make content easily found and highly relevant to their related queries.

• Front-load title tags and meta descriptions.
  • Place your most important keyword phrases first.
  • Use only those keywords in your copy.
• Re-write URLs to include target phrases
  • If you have ugly URLs or ones that don’t relate to the content the page, rewrite them. You may have to pull off some tricks with redirects in order to preserve links.
• Optimize one page of your site for each keyword that you are targeting
  • Use one keyword per page (and its variants).
• • Place the keyword phrase in the header above paragraphs and then in the paragraphs themselves.
  • Be mindful of keyword density
    • A good range is around 2%. Don’t put in a keyword too much, and definitely don’t make your content sound unnatural.
• Canonicalize your URLs
• Make your home page links no-follow
  • Search engine bots follow links. If you have bots following links back to your home page, this is not good because chances are this is how they entered your site in the first place. Although dated, Matt Cutts has an interesting post about sculpting PageRank from within a website.

As marketers in the online world, we must be positioned as anthropologists and objective reporters more than sales people out to push a product. People don’t go online to be sold, they go there for information and they go there to buy. Providing web users with helpful information that will help them buy should be the primary goal, and any SEO form should follow that function. Good content makes the provider of that information look like they know what they are doing, and it gives visitors confidence that they have found the information they need to make their decisions.

How do you balance SEO and content production? Do you often find yourself writing for search engines? I know I sometimes do!

According to the Pew Research Center, as of January of 2013, 45% of American adults own a smart phone. In April of 2012, 55% of them used the internet on their phones, which was nearly double the rate of three years ago. Facebook currently has more than 100 million users on its mobile platform across a variety of devices. Ever since the dawn of the iPhone, mobile computing has reached a new standard, and having mobile-friendly content is more important now than in previous years. Check out these tips for getting your website content ready for the small screen.

Mobile-Friendly Plugins and Themes

Plugins

Making the transition to mobile will be easiest for those already using popular CMS’s like WordPress or Joomla. If you are using WordPress, WPTouch allows you to change your content for mobile users on iOS, Android, and other popular mobile platforms — no more itty-bitty menus and using the pinch-to-zoom method on i-devices. With the plugin, users can customize the way their content looks for users accessing the site via mobile devices. Some other WordPress plugins to try include WordPress Mobile Edition and WordPress Mobile Pack.

If you are using Joomla, there are also a variety of plugins to make your traditional site mobile-friendly. Mobile Joomla is an extension that translates all your previously hard-to-see content into an easy-to-read format. The extension optimizes itself depending on what device is accessing your site, and it leverages the strengths of that particular device. There is a free version of the extension, but it lacks support and is full of advertising. If you sign up for the 8 dollar per month subscription, the advertisements disappear, plus you gain access to some extra features and support. There are also a lot of other extensions for displaying your Joomla site on mobile devices.

Themes 

If you haven’t started development acitvities on a site yet, and you plan on using a CMS, there are tons of responsive themes for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and numerous other popular content management systems. I don’t like to draw attention to specific themes because there are so many, and the type that you choose should be driven by the goals for your site. I can, however, offer some tips of things to look for when choosing your responsive theme. No matter what you choose or what CMS you use, make sure the theme you select is designed to work for the version of CMS you will have or currently have. Avoid free themes for WordPress and Joomla (and most likely for other CMS’s, as well). This may not be true for all free themes, but for most that I have seen, free comes with strings attached. For instance, the themes and their associated files may be poorly designed. They may contain unwanted links that could cause you issues down the road. They could also (and often do) contain advertisements, links to spammy sites or difficult-to-remove code that you certainly don’t want. I can also recommend a couple of different websites that offer good themes and reasonable prices. For WordPress, check out Elegant Themes. For Joomla, AS Templates has a lot of good choices and excellent documentation for all of their themes.

If you aren’t using a CMS and have a custom-designed website, have no fear! There are some really cool tools out there to help you. Tekora, for example, is a software as a service (SaaS) provider that helps webmasters build mobile websites easily. GoMobi is another such provider, and both can help businesses that may not be able to just download a plugin or a theme to make their website mobile-friendly.

Should I go Mobile?

I have heard people ask this question before, and the fast answer is, it depends. Like any action we take in business, our decisions should be based on solid data that tells us what to do. Sometimes data is not available, but in the world of web marketing, data is abundant and it is also very targeted. If you have been tracking your site (and you should be), take a look at how many visitors come from mobile devices. There are bound to be at least a few, so does this warrant making your site mobile-friendly? Probably not unless the task of doing so is extremely easy and won’t take much time. If you do have a lot of traffic coming from mobile devices, perhaps it is time you think about how those visitors’ experiences are being affected by your site not being mobile-friendly.

Are you planning on building a mobile version of your website? Have you already done it? If so, what challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?