IS YOUR BUSINESS MISSING OUT ON E- COMMERCE?

OUT OF DATE websites are costing Kiwi businesses dearly. Businesses could be missing out on half of the e-commerce they’re due because their websites haven’t been updated for Internet browsers on smartphones and tablets.

Hamilton based graphic design and web development company E9 surveyed 150 New Zealand websites and found half were not responsive on the web browsers of mobile devices. This means websites designed for large desktop computer screens appear exactly the same on a smartphones or tablet, only in a shrunken form.

Such websites are designed to be navigated with a mouse, rather than fingers, making it difficult to move from page to page.

“It’s far from a great user experience for the mobile device user,” says E9 general manager Mehrdad Behroozi. “In fact it’s tedious seeing the website so tiny on your mobile device. It’s like trying to read your name on a grain of rice.

“If your non-mobile responsive website drives a potential customer to your competitor, and they end up spending money with them, this can be a very expensive mistake.”

It’s no coincidence that some of New Zealand’s busiest websites, google.co.nz and trademe.co.nz, are optimised for mobile web browsers. They appear one way on a desktop or laptop computer, and another way on a smartphone or tablet.

“We were really surprised to see how many New Zealand websites are still not responsive to mobile devices,” Behroozi says.

“If you have a website that is not responsive to mobile devices, you don’t need a new one, only to update it for the latest technology which is here to stay.”

Internet usage from mobile devices exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time in October 2016, StatCounter Global Stats found. Mobile device usage claimed 51.3 percent of Internet usage that month, compared with 48.7 percent from desktop computers.