Mythbusting Google’s “Mobilegeddon"

Back in December, we published an article called “Another Google Game-Changer: How Going Mobile Friendly Will Boost Your Search Visibility” that addressed the new “mobile friendly” designation that the search engine was adding to websites that had been optimized for mobile devices.

At the time, Google said that they saw “these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience.” They went on to say, “we are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.” Many people speculated that it would only be a matter of time before Google started rewarding sites that were mobile friendly, and thereby penalizing those that were not. That day has come.

In a recent announcement, Google clarified their intentions for this mobile friendly label, stating that “starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”

If your site is not mobile friendly, Google has been quite clear in the fact that that site will no longer be given the same consideration that sites that are responsive and mobile friendly will be given. If you haven’t yet made multi-device support a priority on your website, now is the time to do so!

In prestigious company

Creating mobile friendly websites that are built with a responsive approach is not a new idea. The article that introduced this term to the industry was published in 2010 and it has been a best practice for years with Google recommending it as their preferred solution for multi-device support for quite some time. Still, even though responsive web design has been an important part of the Web industry for a while, there are many companies that have not yet implemented these best practices on their own site. If you are one of the companies that has thus far eschewed this approach to multi-device support, rest assured that you are in prestigious company.

A recent article by TechCrunch found that 44% of websites for Fortune 500 companies failed when using the Google PageSpeed Insights API. This tool shows if a site is, indeed, mobile friendly. The findings of this report show that the failure to go responsive is not always due to financial reasons. The prestigious companies on the Fortune 500 list can certainly afford to redesign their websites to add a mobile-friendly experience. So why haven’t they done so then? Oftentimes, when a company fails to go responsive and create a site with an optimized experience for all screens and devices, it is because they do not fully understand the importance or benefits of doing so.

Mobile expectations

Google’s changes to their algorithm show that they expect more from websites and the experience they deliver to mobile devices. This makes sense, because web users as a whole have begun to expect more from mobile websites.

A short time ago, Google conducted a survey of website users and their opinions on the mobile web experience. They found that “72 percent of mobile users say it’s important to them that websites are mobile-friendly, yet 96 percent have visited a site that doesn’t work well on their device.”

The survey, and resulting report, went on to state that “users are five times more likely to abandon the task they are trying to complete if the site isn’t optimized for mobile use, with 79 percent saying they will go back to search and try to find another site to meet their needs.”

As these numbers show, the expectations for mobile websites are rising and the patience to deal with non-mobile friendly sites is greatly diminishing. Because of this, the “do nothing” approach to multi-device support is simply no longer an option.

The “do nothing” approach

The “do nothing” approach to mobile web support is pretty easy to accomplish, because, as the name suggests, you do nothing to your website and allow a layout that was intended for large screen, desktop monitors to display on all devices and screen sizes – mobile included. Before the rise in popularity of mobile devices, this is how all websites were built. As such, when people first began using those mobile devices to access websites, they accepted the fact that sites were difficult to use on those devices. They had to “pinch and zoom” to read content or tap links that were meant to be clicked with a mouse, not touched with a finger. Once responsive design took hold, however, and as more and more sites integrated this approach and improved their mobile experience, expectations from customers were raised.

In short order, the “do nothing” approach went from an unfortunate, yet acceptable, solution to a sign that your site was behind the times. Now, with Google’s changes to their search algorithm and their clear stance that the “do nothing” approach is no longer acceptable, this approach will not only show you are behind, it will also hurt your site’s overall SEO. If you have not yet made your site mobile friendly, and you are not planning to do so now, expect that your site will fall further and further behind the times and lower and lower in Google’s search engine rankings.

The case for mobile-friendly

Google’s algorithm changes are the final piece that many companies may have needed to finally take the steps to make their site mobile friendly – but maintaining quality rankings is not the only reason to use this approach. There are a number of benefits to going responsive on your website, including:

Customer service – since customers expect a website that works well on all devices, from desktops to tablets to phones and beyond, by delivering a quality experience on all these devices, you present a better overall customer service experience

Business development / customer retention – as the Google report shows, customers who visit a site on a mobile device and find it not optimized for that device are likely to leave the site and seek out an alternative for the products or services the need. This is lost business for you! A site that works well on all devices ensures that the traffic you get is the traffic you keep!

Content consistency – with a responsive website, you have 1 website to maintain and manage, as opposed to separate sites for mobile versus desktop users. That one site will dynamically reflow its layout based on a user’s screen size. This means that while the look of the site may adjust for different users, the content will remain the same, ensuring that the right message is always delivered regardless of the device being used to access the website

Take the leap.

Expect search engine rankings to change dramatically after April 21st as Google begins using mobile friendless as ranking criteria. If you are not ready for this change, speak to your web or marketing team immediately and get the ball rolling on plans that will bring mobile support to your website and have your business ready for the increasing mobile-centric future of the Web.

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Six Lessons from the Google School of Logo Design for a Digital World

Recently, Google set the design world abuzz when they unveiled their new brand identity. Gone was the familiar, sophisticated serif font reminiscent of classic books and newspapers that rolled off the printing presses. In its place, a new mark that retains Google’s trademark rainbow of colors but with a new sans-serif typeface of the company’s own creation called “Product Sans.” Love it or hate it, Google’s reasoning behind their redesign and what they hope to achieve with this new logo offer some interesting insights that any company in today’s multi-screen, multi-device world should take into consideration.

1. Size matters.

In their article rolling out the redesign, Google cites the need to “create a scalable mark that could convey the feeling of the full logotype in constrained spaces” as one of the challenges that they wanted to address. The need to consider a variety of screen sizes has become incredibly important over the past few years with the growing adoption of small-screened devices – from mobile phones to wearables like smartwatches. The relatively tiny screens on these devices put space at a premium, and most brand marks that were created prior to the advent of these small screens struggle to adapt to a much smaller canvas. For a visual brand to be successful in today’s world, you must ensure that it can scale and adapt to work effectively on any screen size or device.

2. You must consider the whole ecosystem.

In the not-too-distant past, when designing a new visual identity, there were only a limited number of applications that had to be taken into consideration: business cards, letterhead, signage, collateral materials, ads, product packaging, etc. This is why many early websites were little more than digital brochures. Companies took what they already understood (printed brochures) and tried to port them over to a brand new medium (the Web). This was obviously not an optimal solution, and since then, web design has come a long way from the days of static brochure sites. In much the same way, it’s time for logo design to evolve by taking into account the full array of digital platforms in which brands must reside today, including websites, mobile apps and social media sites, just to name a few. Taken as a whole, these make up a complex ecosystem with different channels that build upon and feed off of others. As a result, Google’s new identity takes the form not of a singular logo but of a system comprised of three “elemental states” that are flexible enough to be used across all mediums and platforms:

• Google logotype: The sans serif logtype retains Google’s signature multi-color sequence.
• Dots: A dynamic distillation of the logotype that takes the form of four animated, perpetually moving dots that are used for interactive, assistive and transitional moments.
• Google G: A compact version of the Google logo that works in small contexts.

When evaluating your own logo and how it translates across different platforms and channels, it’s important to make sure that all of its elements and iterations work together seamlessly so that they feel connected to your core brand identity in order to protect the integrity of your brand throughout the ecosystem.

3. There’s more to logo design than choosing a typeface.

Talk to someone who does not understand the nuances of design, and they are likely to assume that the process of creating a logo is comprised of little more than selecting an attractive font and maybe adding an illustrated icon in front of it. In truth, however, logo design is its own unique and complex discipline. Just as Google did, any successful logo design process must consider the weight and legibility of that logo along with “spacing, clearance rules, and specification for in-product treatments.” It also must factor in big-picture thinking, such as how the logo will transform in various applications (when it must be displayed in black and white versus full color, for example) and whether it sets the right tone for the brand. Yes, using attractive letterforms is part of designing a quality logo, but this process goes way deeper than just font selection.

4. Performance matters.

How quickly a website loads is more important today than ever before. With mobile devices making up a larger and larger percentage of website traffic, and with emerging countries becoming an important part of the audience on the Web, the need to create sites that load quickly for all users is paramount. To accomplish this, website designers must look for ways to streamline a site’s overall file size. The new Google logo is only 305 bytes, which is a significant decrease from the old logo, which weighed in at ~14,000 bytes. Google actually had to deliver a text-based, non-image version of their old logo in some instances, but the new one is so small that it can be delivered to all connections, keeping the brand identity consistent. Overall performance is critical to the success of a website – after all, no one ever complains that a site loads too fast. You may not be thinking about download size and performance when creating a logo, but you should be, because improved performance should be a thread that runs through every decision you make on your website. Better performance can mean happier visitors, improved search engine rankings and better conversions rates for your website.

5. You can’t please everyone.

As soon as the new Google logo debuted, there were people praising the design as well as those tearing it down. Even within the design community, reactions on Twitter ranged from “The beautiful balance of utility and joy” to “I love the font in the new Google logo – a revival of Paul Renner’s rarely seen 1934 masterpiece, Futura Jackas” – proof that no matter how well-reasoned or well-intentioned the principles behind your design are, you simply cannot please everyone. One of the most challenging realities of a redesign, whether it is for a logo, a website or an application, is that you are forcing change upon people who did not ask for or expect it. Even if the change is for the better, it’s human nature to favor the familiar and therefore to react strangely to a change that they did not initiate themselves. Couple this with the fact that people are more likely to contact you when they dislike something than when they like it, and a redesign can quickly generate what feels like an overwhelming amount of negative comments. For some companies, this initial wave of critical feedback can be scary and may lead to the temptation to revert back to the old design. But you cannot give into this! If you followed a good process and if the new design is well thought-out and executed, you need to give it time for people to grow accustomed to it and embrace it. You cannot please everyone, but given ample time, you will find that a quality redesign will win people over, and all of those detractors will fall silent.

6. Redesign for the right reasons.

Because introducing a new visual identity can be disorienting for your customers, and because there’s no purely scientific method to ensure your redesign will be well received, it’s important to make sure that there is good reason behind your decision to reinvent the look of your brand. With Google, the logic behind their decision was clear: “Since its inception, the Google.com homepage has been strikingly simple: The quirky, multicolored logo sits above a single, approachable input field on a clean white canvas. But as technology moves forward, the canvas itself is changing, and the inputs and needs are becoming more diverse. New classes of devices and ways to interact and communicate have emerged with wearables, voice technology, and smart devices in the world around us. Users now engage with Google using a constellation of devices, and our brand should express the same simplicity and delight they expect from our homepage, while fully embracing the opportunities offered by each new device and surface.” In short, Google needed a new identity that would represent the brand as effectively to someone who is typing keywords into a search bar on a desktop as one who is using a smartwatch as one who is using a device that may not yet even be conceived – or at least available to the general public. Likewise, while you should never redesign your company’s logo just for the sake of redesign itself, if your brand has evolved since your logo was originally conceived – whether in terms of the products you offer, the audience you serve or the channels and platforms through which they interact with your brand – it may well be worth the risk to introduce a new, modernized identity that will support the growth of your company now and for many years to come.

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