According to research we recently conducted with the chaps at Design Shack, a lot of web designers are still not taking into account mobile web browsers. The survey of 500 web designers found that that only 50% are considering mobile web access when designing a new website. (If you think 500 doesn’t sound like a lot, it is worth pointing out that it is possible to apply the findings from a sample of that size to a population of 15 million*.)

Mobile phone web access has grown dramatically in recent years, rising from 0.2% of all UK web traffic in 2009 to 15% in 2011**. As more and more users start accessing the internet via their mobile phones, websites built for large monitors and high broadband speeds become more difficult to read and slower to load.

This increases the likelihood of a visitor bouncing before the page has finished loading, which in turn means the number of websites missing out on sales and returning traffic is also increasing.

Products such as goMobi have moved to fill this gap, offering users point and click mobile web builder tools. With the increasing prevalence of these Do It Yourself tools, professional web designers may be missing out on a lucrative source of revenue.

The volume of traffic accessing websites using mobile phones is only going to rise for the foreseeable future. Web designers need to start adding mobile usability to their list of services quickly, and those who fail to adapt to these changes risk being left behind.

* With a confidence interval of 5 and a confidence level of 95%

** Sources: tecmark.co.uk & Econsultancy.com