This post is part of our series on how to improve your home health website design. You can view all the topics on the How to improve your home health website blog post.

Did you know that 63% of home health service searches begin on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets? This is why it is imperative your home health website design works on all devices, particularly on smartphones. 

While most websites will display on mobile devices, a website designed for smaller smartphone and tablet screens provides a much better user experience. Before smartphones, websites were designed to a fixed size to display properly on a standard computer screen. 

Today, devices are built in a wide range of screen sizes and websites need to be designed to fit a variety of viewports (the area of a website that can be seen on a smartphone, tablet, or computer). 

That means all images, text, and tools used on your website need to fit 6.1” iPhone 11 screens, 6.8” Samsung Galaxy Note Plus screens, 10.2” iPad screens, 12.3” Surface Pro 7 screens, 21.5” iMac screens, etc. It’s important all images and your website’s viewport are optimized for these mobile devices, fonts aren’t too big or too small for the viewport, and the website layout adapts to fit all screen sizes.

In addition to building mobile-friendly websites, developers pay close attention to how long it takes for pages on your website to load on different mobile devices. If your website is difficult to navigate or takes forever to load, visitors may become frustrated and even take their business to a competing agency without giving yours another thought.

Common problems with a website’s mobile experience include:

• Slow load time
• Poor formatting
• Difficult navigation
• Broken or missing images/text

Google works hard to provide its users the best possible experience and will actually penalize a website by knocking it down in search results if it does not display well on mobile devices. 

According to Backlinko, a website that shows first in Google search results averages 31.7% clicks while a second page search result averages out considerably lower at 0.78%. That means no matter how great your website is, a poor mobile display can cost you your first page search result even if the search was specifically for your agency’s name! A subpar mobile website can even bump a competing agency with a mobile-friendly website up above your listing in search.

The good news is, it’s possible to add a mobile version to your existing home health website design or build a new website that displays equally across all screen sizes.