Nearly two-thirds of the websites belonging to property agents and surveyors in the UK are not mobile-friendly, according to research from specialist property PR and marketing company Flashbulb and SoftForge, the website design, build and hosting business.
The research, which used Google’s ‘mobile-friendly test’ app, found that, despite 52% of internet users reporting that smartphones and tablets are now their preferred device for getting online1, a large proportion of the UK’s property industry have yet to embrace the realities of the digital economy with a third of the websites belonging to the 75 largest property firms, developers, agents and house builders failing the mobile-friendly test.
Andrew Barber of Flashbulb commented: “In May 2015 Google2 announced that, in ten countries around the world, more searches ‘take place on mobile devices than on computers.’ While this fact was not a surprise to many, it seems to have bypassed many in the property industry.
“Sadly it seems that the property sector is more stationary than mobile.
“The importance of having a mobile-friendly website can really not be underestimated. The browsing habits of individuals is such that if a website gives a poor experience on a phone or a tablet, the user is likely to rapidly move on to another, competing site. The user’s experience is paramount and it’s no longer just about what a website looks like.”
SoftForge’s Phil Walton said: “When looked at in isolation, housebuilders are more advanced than other sectors with 76% of the top 25 firms having mobile friendly sites. The top 25 commercial developers and property companies did not perform quite as well, with 68% of the sites passing the test.
“However, it was the agency and surveying firms that performed worse with 48% of the websites belonging to the top 25 firms failing the mobile-friendly test.
“We then looked further into the problem and ran the test on the websites belonging to over 300 firms of agents and surveyors around the UK. The results were quite staggering, with 60% of the sites failing the test.
“Our experience is that individual searches are done with high expectations of finding the right information rapidly and in an easily accessible format that satisfies the demand for relevance and immediacy.
“In many cases the slow adoption of mobile-friendly technology is a result of the reluctance to invest in a new website a few years after it was last built and the misbelief that the property sector is somehow immune from the changes in how users find and interact with businesses online. This is why having a mobile-friendly website is now a factor on where you rank on Google’s search results,” he concluded.
