The American love affair with mobile devices is blooming into a meaningful long-term relationship. Nearly half of all Google searches between June and November 2014 originated from mobile devices, according to marketing news website ClickZ. And last year the volume of auto loan, mortgage, and credit card applications made through smartphones and tablets soared more than 60 percent, reports Javelin Research & Strategy.
When consumers access your marketing website from a mobile device, are they seeing a page that immediately and intuitively adapts to the screen they’re viewing it on? Will your site frustrate them with text running off the screen, causing them to scroll in order to navigate, or a tiny, shrunken version of your webpage that requires them to zoom?
If your financial institution has been dragging its feet about upgrading to a mobile-responsive website, you’ll soon find yourself standing at the back of the crowd while mobile-enamored consumers marry their financial futures to some other bank or credit union. If you needed more inspiration to commit, Google—the 800-pound gorilla of search engines—is playing matchmaker.
Earlier this year, Google made changes to how it ranks mobile-friendly web pages. Now, when consumers use a mobile device to conduct a search, sites that are mobile-friendly will get a boost in the rankings. If your institution’s site isn’t mobile friendly, it will likely drop lower in the rankings than others that are mobile-responsive. Your institution’s name might not even show up on the first page of results—an outcome that can greatly reduce the number of users who see you as an option. Think we’re overestimating the risks? Google said in its official statement that mobile-friendly pages—those that are responsive to and easily usable on a mobile device—could rise significantly in the search result rankings.
And make no mistake, consumers want to do their banking from their mobile devices. Javelin found that in 2014, in addition to the rise in loan applications submitted through mobile devices, 70 percent of probable checking account applicants said they would rather submit their application digitally this year!
All these numbers add up to a new reality: If your financial institution website doesn’t show up high in Google’s results, you could be losing a lot of business. The potential negative impact of a website that doesn’t automatically adapt its display and functionality for mobile access now goes far beyond consumer frustration—it’s going to land hard on your bottom line.
“Google is constantly refining things, and we do expect the impact of this change to escalate with time,” says Kevin Butler, product manager of FIRSTBranch, an online branch for community financial institutions. FIRSTBranch’s online branch websites automatically adjust display and functionality based on the device used to access the site. “Every day a financial institution doesn’t have a mobile-friendly website, it’s more likely to disappear from Google search results, and the visitors they do get from a mobile search won’t have a positive experience. Mobile-friendly websites are now a requirement—not an option—for banks that want to stay competitive. ”
Want to learn more about how to build a mobile-friendly website? Visit ThisIsFIRSTBranch to start the process of building a website that will keep you ranking well on Google.
