[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength Matters Media. Video. Print. Podcasts. Today,
[00:00:06] Josh Kennedy: we're talking about why your gym website needs to be mobile friendly. And this is a really important topic, which we briefly mentioned on the last podcast about how it lays out and be able to read it, which is all, which is all part of it, but James, what constitutes a mobile friendly website?
[00:00:20] A
[00:00:20] James Breese: website that actually loads on your phone. How about that?
[00:00:23] Josh Kennedy: Brilliant. Moving on, is there, is there anything more to it than that?
[00:00:28] James Breese: Uh, yeah, there's lots of things go into it, but a mobile friendly website is one that actually adapts to the mobile phone you're using. There's multiple styles of mobile phone around the world.
[00:00:40] I think most people use an iPhone. Or they use an Android phone. So they go adapt to different types of devices, different sizes. Some have got gigantic ones. They're now foldable ones going everywhere. They do different screen sizes. But the key stat is this is that 61 percent of the time, every time.
[00:00:59] Josh Kennedy: 61 [00:01:00] percent of the time, mobile friendly websites work every time.
[00:01:02] James Breese: Exactly. Now what is it? 61. 21%. That's it. 61. 21 percent in 2024 of all traffic to websites. And Google is on a mobile device that is huge. And it's one of those things where it comes to gym owners. I'm seeing so many gym owners neglect their website. They're relying on social ads, meta, Instagram, TikTok, all these different things.
[00:01:27] But they're forgetting that the highest in 10 of traffic comes via Google, and their website is like 10 years old, 15 years old. You can't find your way around it. So it's hard to navigate it. So you've got to remember that a mobile friendly website is one that adapts to mobile devices and that shrinks.
[00:01:45] In the simplest way, think of how, like, it changes position and movement. So if you go to like, you know, you got, um, you know, horizontal mode, vertical mode, sorry, vertical mode, horizontal mode, I can't even do my ups and downs today. But you've got [00:02:00] to get that right accordingly. So it needs to adapt to accordingly.
[00:02:03] So it's got to be dynamic and move accordingly. Now, and that's, and in today's world, there's no, there's no excuse. You can, all websites should be pre built with this. If the web designer doesn't do it, You need a new web designer as simple as possible. I was going to
[00:02:16] Josh Kennedy: say from someone who is not techie, the non techie person on here.
[00:02:20] Does it not just do it automatically? Does it have to be built in? That's something that a website designer has to build into your website.
[00:02:26] James Breese: Uh, you have to use a theme that does mobile friendly procedures. I think that's the best way to put it. So you could go and build your own website, which is the hardest way to do it.
[00:02:40] But most of them on Wix, Squarespace, they come pre built with themes. You can just copy and paste and they, they are mobile friendly. WordPress is mostly if you choose the right theme, but it's about choosing the right theme for speed and for optimizing at the same time. So it's, there's, yes, technically they should be, [00:03:00] but you've got to choose the right one because some themes you choose, they go, Oh, that looks pretty.
[00:03:04] But in reality, it's so slow and so heavy that it actually makes it worse. When loading, so people actually don't click on your website in the first place because it takes too long to load up. So,
[00:03:14] Josh Kennedy: what then are some of the benefits of having a good mobile friendly design? Does it increase, um, engagement?
[00:03:22] Do people stay on your page
[00:03:24] James Breese: longer? Yeah. Increases engagement, increases conversions, increases sales. Let's get to the bottom line. So if you haven't got a website that loads fast, which is mobile, which means mobile friendly too. That's easily digestible. So when people are reading pages on a website, so if you write, write content for a desktop, for example, people will do big, long paragraphs, but on a mobile, you've got to keep them short and sweet.
[00:03:50] Like one, one line, maybe two lines max, because people have skim reading. So the way people go onto your website now on, on a mobile devices, they do this. They go into the phone. [00:04:00] They scroll to the bottom, scroll back up, and they start going through it again. Think about next time you go onto a website, how you manage it.
[00:04:06] You literally look on a page, okay, top page, that looks interesting. Scroll to the bottom, then you start scrolling up and down to see where you want to stop at to learn more about it. So you've got to have digestible bites of information. And that also can constitute mobile friendly, not just the actual techie side, the engine under the hood, essentially.
[00:04:24] So there's lots of elements to this. Is it readable for mobile devices
[00:04:29] Josh Kennedy: and you gotta be really careful with, um, popups and images again and stuff, haven't you? 'cause we've mentioned this before, like the um, the Liverpool Echo, which obviously I read a lot for, for Everton. And you've mentioned like Wales online in the Manchester Evening News, their websites Oh my, the unreadable.
[00:04:47] Absolutely. Yet I, I still go back on 'cause I wanna read about Everton, but it is a horrendous experience.
[00:04:52] James Breese: Exactly. And we haven't got the luxury of them. Of all the advertising and cost they have to try and promote it. And it's [00:05:00] ridiculous. But yeah, so for us, we've got about user experience. So yeah, pop ups are a big part of it.
[00:05:05] When do they pop up? Are they popping up everywhere? Or are they in strategic places? But the point is, it's the user experience just as much as the technical stuff when it comes to mobile friendly websites. So go onto your website, choose, look through it. Like, would you read it yourself if you are new to your website?
[00:05:23] Because we're always biased, going, this is okay, I can get away with it, it's working fine. Most of the time it's not. So when we're writing content in our blogs, you'll notice that, yes, is it grammatically incorrect? Absolutely. Right? Do the, do the copywriters and the proofreaders that we get using us get annoyed with it?
[00:05:40] Yes, they do. But they don't like it. But in terms of user experience, we use one or two lines tops in terms of breaking down the content and never too much content on the homepage.
[00:05:50] Josh Kennedy: What about, um, how does that impact on SEO and, uh, and search rankings for Google?
[00:05:55] James Breese: Massive, massive. It's a mobile first world.
[00:05:59] If you haven't got a [00:06:00] mobile friendly website, that's fast loading, you will not rank highly on Google. Or if you are ranking highly on Google, it's because there's no competition. But if you want to get into a competitive market, let's say London, New York, San Francisco, you have to have a fast loading website that's mobile optimized because it's a mobile first world.
[00:06:20] How do you know it's mobile optimized? You go to PageSpeed Insights on the Google, on the Googles, put in your website link in there and it'll tell you how fast the website is actually just tested. One of our clients, um, Samantha Attard's website this morning to make sure everything's going well because we made some changes to her website.
[00:06:37] Her score is 98%. I challenge you to get a faster website than that from anybody else. Just saying. That's a challenge for me putting out there. So that tells me it's mobile first and Google likes it. And that's why her blog content is ranking highly.
[00:06:51] Josh Kennedy: It is on a lot of it's number one in it, in a matter of days, weeks, which is fantastic.
[00:06:56] Um, speed, what kind of health speed [00:07:00] loading speed are we looking at? Mobile first, but also mentioned
[00:07:02] James Breese: desktop as well. 90, 90 percent plus 90 percent plus all our websites. We guarantee 90 percent of speed of course, boss. That's exactly what we're focusing on because that is the key ranking factor for all the content.
[00:07:15] And on desktop, a hundred percent. You know, if you want to go to, let's use Sam's actual website, spirocollective. com, go into PageSpeed Insights, put her website into there. You will see here, she's at 98 percent and 100 percent respectively.
[00:07:29] Josh Kennedy: Fantastic. Andrew, I feel bad not brought you in at all on this, James.
[00:07:32] I've just been jabbering away, but anything you want to add before we wrap up? Yeah, I was
[00:07:36] Andrew Wallis: just thinking is James is explaining all this. I think this is a great strategic play for independent gyms, particularly, uh, that it levels the playing field. You know, it's James says so many, um, in the fitness world gyms in particular, they've had their website bill and that might be 10 or 15 years ago.
[00:07:56] It's not being, um, Um, it's [00:08:00] not being updated and it, it doesn't, um, uh, have these, uh, mobile, um, impacts. So if you have that focus on getting your, your, uh, website mobile friendly, you're gonna, you're gonna jump higher, um, and, and be found. And as I say, that helps level the playing field for you. If you're competing against the big
[00:08:20] James Breese: box gyms, and that's, I think that's the important thing to talk about here now is that we are competing, you are as an independent gym owner competing against the big box gyms, you've got thousands of pounds of money and investment behind them, but it's why we When we, you know, we're a digital marketing agency, we help you market and grow your business.
[00:08:37] That's what we're trying to do for gym owners, personal trainers, any health practitioner out there. That's what we, that's what we specialize in. But this is why we emphasize that anything that we do to help you grow your business comes down to the website. That's why we build people's websites for them for scratch and do it for free because our services will not work to the best of their ability until they have that speed behind them.
[00:08:58] So I can't emphasize this enough. So if you are [00:09:00] doing ads, try and market your business online, digitally. You know, for us, the key thing is that website speed and the architecture to get you ranking highly on speed and also in terms of mobile friendly
[00:09:12] Josh Kennedy: design. Absolutely. So there you go. Jim Onus, make sure that your websites are mobile friendly.
[00:09:17] It is absolutely massively important. Uh, for your Google rankings and so much more in this day and age. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. If you want help getting more clients or patients, then booking for your free 15 minute strategy call with us by going to strengthmatters.
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