Home improvement businesses are realizing that their websites need to be as optimized for mobile as for desktop. But voice search is also quickly increasing in popularity. Which should you prioritize?

In the early days of online marketing, it was easy: All you had to worry about was the desktop experience. That’s because, well, the only computers people owned were desktops. You focused all your optimization efforts there because it was the only game in town.

As you know, everything has shifted over the past few years. Smartphones and tablets have become virtually ubiquitous in American life, providing 24/7 access to the internet wherever you are.

At this point, it’s likely even more important to optimize for mobile than for desktop. Google now treats your mobile site as its primary indicator (over your desktop site) for how business ranks in search results (aka Google’s mobile-first index).

The need to prioritize mobile for better home improvement marketing is further borne out by recent analyses indicating that:

• 80 percent of internet users own a smartphone
• By 2019, mobile advertising is expected to represent 72 percent of all U.S. digital ad spending
• 57% of users said they wouldn’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site

So you know you absolutely must optimize for mobile searchers. And it’s important not to neglect the desktop either, because you’re still likely seeing a large proportion of traffic from desktop.

But what about voice?

Voice search has become massively popular over the past couple of years, as virtual personal assistants such as Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa have seen widespread adoption among everyday consumers.

People have found voice search faster and easier than typing out queries, and it’s become especially convenient due to specialized devices such as Google Home and Amazon Echo, in addition to most smartphones and tablets. It’s frankly hard to find a new mobile device now that doesn’t have voice search capability.

With so many considerations, where should you put your optimization emphasis? Frankly, that depends on your particular business and what you’re looking to achieve with your home improvement marketing, but keep this one piece of advice in mind:

Don’t neglect any of them. They’re all very important right now, and each one deserves some TLC:

• Desktop might be the “dying” interface, but it’s far from dead. Lots of homeowners still use desktops regularly.
• Mobile is incredibly popular and will only become more so over the next few years.
• Voice is the new kid on the block, but consumers have taken to it like wildfire.

And don’t forget that many consumers have a “cross-device journey,” beginning their research on one device and eventually completing it on another. That’s another reason you need to optimize for desktop, mobile, and voice.

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