A while back I wrote an articled titled What is a Mobile Responsive WordPress Theme and Why Should You Use It? When I wrote it, about 30% of readers visited websites on mobile devices — tablets and smartphones.
Today it’s more — lots more.
According to Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, those numbers, at least for his site, are now at almost 50%. And that number will continue to grow.
If making your site accessible to half the people who want to view it isn’t a compelling enough reason to make it mobile responsive, consider this:
On November 18, Google announced that it will consider mobile responsiveness in site rankings.
Let me repeat that, in a slightly different way. . .
If your site isn’t mobile responsive Google will drop you in the rankings.
Using a mobile responsive WordPress theme is no longer optional.
I’ve been recommending only mobile responsive themes for a while. Count on it — if a theme isn’t mobile responsive, I won’t recommend it. Period. And if you want me to build a site for you using a non-responsive theme, I won’t do it. I’m even going to review all the themes I show in the Resources section of the site, and remove those that aren’t responsive.
Pretty drastic? Not really.
In this crowded internet, you need every advantage. And if your WordPress site doesn’t make it easy for the smartphone and tablet users to read, you’re tying a great big anchor around your neck before jumping into the water.
If you’re not sure whether your site is mobile responsive, you can check it out with Google using this link. Just type in your URL, and Google will let you know.
I checked both my sites — Future Expats Forum and WordPress Building Blocks — and both passed with flying colors. Here’s the little message from Google.
It also showed me what each of my homepages looks like on a smartphone.
UPDATE: If your site isn’t mobile responsive by the end of March, 2021, Google will stop indexing it. Get important information like this early, by subscribing to my newsletter, below!
I totally get it.
You’re a freelancer or solo business owner. You need a website (or maybe you need to update the one you’ve got), but you don’t speak Geek and you just want to get it done.
You know that WordPress can make that website-building-thing a whole lot easier for you, but you’re not sure where to start. Or maybe you’ve bounced around a bunch of “helpful” sites and social media and now you’re more confused than when you started.
You just want to cut through the clutter, put up a site that will help you grow your business, and get back to the things you’d rather be spending your time on.
You need The WordPress Beginner’s Blueprint.
I am considering the Parallex theme for this new site which will be for prosperity/encouragement and selling of software products. I will want to be able to post a lot of videos, mobile friendly and love the 2 to 6 columns for free reports and teachings.
I looked up Parallex scrolling and am wondering if it is slow uploading, it appeared that way on the award winning sites.
Page load speed will have less to do with the fact that it’s parallax and much more to do with your host, whether your images are optimized, and other WordPress issues.
Ty you for your answer to Parallex scrolling, Susanna.
I have narrowed the search for a Theme to:
ParallaxPro
and
Modern Studio Pro theme. I notice that Modern studio Pro also has parallex scrolling
This site will be for, at this point, high-end software and will add in more as time goes by. I also want to teach a beginners course for online marketing in the fairly newr future and am in the process of writing a recipe book for people with food intolerances. which will link on my SunflowerCircle site.
So my question regarding the two abovementioned Themes
1)I hate grey type (just see how much colored ink it uses) t. My fav ifont s Arial 14 and I want a site that is suitable for a moderately experienced computer geek.T his site will post a lot of videos .
2) I will need to blog on a weekly basis linking to both sites. Should I set up a separate blogging platform for this?