If you are familiar with the older term “Mobile Friendly Website” but not the more recent term “Responsive Website,” the following timeline explains why having a responsive website, or at least a mobile site with all the same content, is so important. FRM builds only responsive websites and does so on the most widely used “open source” website platform in the world.
Deathcare Industry’s “Website History” Timeline
1996
First funeral home “desktop” websites produced, designed for computer monitors.
2008
1st generation “Mobile Websites” appear in response to growing smartphone ownership. Separate from the main desktop website, these freestanding websites are designed strictly for smartphone users, usually with greatly reduced pages.
2010
The term “Mobile Friendly” appears more in industry circles but refers to having features on one’s desktop website or mobile website that a smartphone user could make better use of – e.g. click to call.
2011
Mobile websites become somewhat common in the deathcare industry – still with stripped down features and few pages.
2013
In January, the first “Responsive” funeral home websites arrive from a deathcare-industry website provider. These websites automatically resize, making all content available to all visitors, no matter the screen size of their device.
2015
April 21 – “Mobilegeddon” – Google effectively “penalizes” websites that are not responsive or which don’t at least have a separate corresponding mobile website. If the mobile website has less content than the full-size site, it is weaker.
May 5 – Google says “more searches conducted via mobile devices than computers.”
May 5 – Google says “more searches conducted via mobile devices than computers.”
2016
May 24 – Google say, “We live in a “mobile-first” world,” and officially embraces a ‘Smartphone-Screen First’ approach to everything. The ‘new era’ of the internet is officially here.
