Now more than ever, internet traffic and usage has come from mobile devices compared to desktop computers. In 2017, 60% of all internet usage was from a smartphone or tablet and the average American spent up to 5 hours per day on a mobile device. As a result of the increased usage of smartphones over desktops, Google has been encouraging businesses to update their websites to mobile-responsive websites. A mobile-responsive site is one that automatically changes its layout and placements of certain menus and buttons automatically.  

Over the last few years, Google has been penalizing websites that do not make this upgrade by pushing them further down in organic Google search results (often times off the first page) if the search came from a mobile device. What this means to your practice:  If a potential patient in your demographic is looking for a specific specialist or treatment for a specific condition, those practices with mobile responsive sites will outrank those that do not. Considering that 70% of patients use Google to search for a condition or a physician, if your website is not ranking on the first page because your site is outdated, you could be losing hundreds of patients per month to your competitors.  Many practices are often hesitant to update their websites because of the perceived cost. However, redesigning your website may not cost as much as you think. You should also consider how much new patient revenue you may be losing to your competitors by not doing so.  Additionally, if you are using any form of Digital Marketing (Google Adwords, Social Media Ads, etc) it is likely your accounts are being penalized or ranking lower for those who are searching from a mobile phone.  Call me today, and let me show you the best practices to optimize your website and digital marketing campaigns.  404-323-5330. 

What this means for your practice: All of this time spent on social media each day is the perfect opportunity to highlight your services, products, and expertise to potential patients. When executed correctly, Facebook and Instagram ads can target users by their locations, behaviors, and websites they have recently visited and their interests. Knowing the behaviors of those in need of your specific services can allow you to target ads directly to those in your area. This is an excellent way to increase your brand awareness as well as generate new patients. Do you treat orthopedic conditions? Imagine a newspaper ad or billboard that was shown only to those with an orthopedic injury or spine condition? That’s what social media marketing can do for your practice. 

Content below the fold does get some looks, but not nearly as many as the content above the fold. A heat map shows 57,453 eyetracking fixations across a wide range of pages, excluding search and search-results pages. Red indicates where users looked the most; yellow where they looked less. White areas got virtually no looks. The top black stripe indicates the page fold in the study; subsequent black stripes represent each additional screen after scrolling. An aggregate A second set of data comes from Google’s analysis of display advertising (PDF) across a huge number of websites. The study looked at how “viewable” an advertisement was, with viewability defined as 50% of the ad’s pixels being on-screen for one second. Advertisements just above the fold had 73% viewability, whereas ads just below the fold had 44% viewability. In the Google study, the drop-off caused by the fold was 66%, because that’s how much more ads just above the fold were visible, compared with ads just below the fold.

Why did Google measure the fold’s impact at 66% when we measured it at 102%? The explanation lies in the two different metrics employed. Google measured whether an ad was displayed on the screen, so that the user might see it if they happened to look directly at that spot. We measured where people actually looked on the screen AND how much time they spent looking. The two quantitative studies produce slightly different estimates of the fold’s impact on the user experience. But both numbers are big: we’re not talking a 5% difference or a 10% difference between information above vs. below the fold. The difference is on the order of 66%–102%! 

If you want a single number as our best current estimate, let's take the mid-point of this range: 84% is the average difference in how users treat info above vs. below the fold. And, that is HUGE. Believe in the fold. It’s there, and the user experience changes drastically at that spot.