Well, it finally happened: responsive design is no longer optional. Starting in April, Google began using “mobile-friendliness” as one of its key criteria for ranking pages in its search results.

As has been predicted for years, mobile searches now outstrip desktop searches. Recently, Google announced that this is indeed the case. In a blog post, Google shared that more searches now take place on mobile devices than on desktop computers in 10 countries including the U.S. and Japan.

However, even if your site’s users buck this trend, Google has chosen to optimize their search results for mobile users, and you have no choice but to play along. No matter how many your visitors are using mobile devices, these changes affect you in a big way.

In short, if your site is not mobile-friendly, your site is significantly less likely to be listed atop Google’s search results. And even if someone manages to find their way to your page, they are more likely than ever to be on a mobile devices. Chances are, they will turn up their nose at your site’s minuscule type and bounce off to another site immediately.

How do you know whether you site is mobile-friendly? Simple. Just paste your website’s address into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

At Forum One, we’ve been developing responsive web design on all of our websites for over three years (and have a not-so-secret recipe for responsive design on Drupal). If you’ve completed a project with us recently, you are good to go.

But if your site is more than a few years old, it is past time to institute responsive design. Responsively-designed sites adapt their interface to the size of the screen being used. They ensure that mobile navigation is intuitive, type is legible, and illustrations are scalable.

While there are a variety of other techniques to improve your site’s search standing, few compare with making your site mobile friendly.

Fortunately, there a lot of resources for getting started. Google themselves offers some great tips for getting started with mobile sites. And, of course, we’d be happy to talk to you about how we might help you make your website responsive. Drop us a line!