In February, Google dropped a bombshell ultimatum on webmasters, warning us to make our website(s) mobile-friendly or else.

A quick six months later, how have you responded? How should you respond moving forward?

First and foremost, you must respond. The web is rapidly becoming the primary marketplace for commerce, both for individual consumers and businesses. Your business must be in this marketplace to survive and thrive.

If you haven’t made the initial move to make your company’s website mobile-friendly then you are already behind the power curve. Google has already made good on its promise. A recent analysis shows that 83% of Google’s top search results are “mobile-friendly.”

If you’re not mobile-friendly, I can guarantee you’ve taken a measurable hit to your search traffic—customers visiting your website.

Take a moment and test your website with Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool.

Okay, now you have all the information that you need to make a good decision. Here’s a quick decision-tree to help you negotiate this new mobile-first environment:

Is your current website mobile-friendly?

• No: You must, at the very least, make a marginal investment in mobile optimizing your current website. Any cost associated with this redesign will offset a guaranteed lose in online revenue as a result of Google burying your site in the search results.
• Yes: Nice work, but don’t get comfortable.

• Your next move should be to lead your competitive space with a mobile adaptive experience.

Let’s talk about this briefly, before I close out this week’s letter.

The quick fix is to do a little CSS-voodoo and style existing website content, images, videos, and forms into a smaller screen size. But, this doesn’t necessarily make it easier to engage with your website on a mobile device.

Tiny text, poorly resized images, impossible to tap text links, and long microscopic forms make for an abandoned web visit.

Once you have passed the basic mobile-friendly Google test, start thinking about creating a mobile-compelling website that delights your visitors.

One final short checklist to help you start this process:

• Optimize your branding for a smaller screen. You want to strike a balance between assuring your visitors that they are in the right place and economizing a smaller screen for the business your customer is attempting to accomplish.
• Make sure that your contact information is at the top of your mobile experience. With a phone or tablet in hand, it becomes very easy to spontaneous reach out—creating a fresh lead.
• Shorten forms, if even necessary, to the bare minimum to get the job done and make the boxes as big as possible to facilitate a tap. Then ensure that you have programmed the labels to facilitate easy auto-fills.
• Leverage social logins or password apps (1Password or LastPass) in your site designs to facilitate simple and secure logins.

Take a moment to look at your website on your mobile phone or tablet. How are you doing? Can customers do what you want them to do–on their phones? What’s your next move?