7 Powerful Benefits of a WordPress Membership Website

7 Powerful Benefits of a WordPress Membership Website

Imagine you're heading home after a long day, and you pull out your phone to pass the time. You come across a membership website that looks interesting.

But the text is tiny, the images go off the screen, and the menus are hard to use. Frustrated, you close the site thinking you’ll check it out later on your computer. 

But let's be honest; you probably won't do that.

If you owned that membership site, you just lost a potential member. 

Why? Because your site wasn't easy to use on mobile. With over half of all web traffic coming from mobile devices, can you afford to ignore the mobile experience? 

In this guide, we’ll explain some critical reasons for making your WordPress membership website mobile-friendly (besides not frustrating users). 

Let's get started! 

The Need for Mobile-Friendly Websites

Mobile internet use has surpassed desktops across the globe in 2023. Over 55% of web traffic worldwide is from mobile devices, compared to just 42% from desktops. 

In the United States,  desktops still lead the way accounting for 67% of traffic, while mobile takes 32%.

What does this mean for membership site owners? 

Put simply — allocate resources to create a mobile-optimised site. People increasingly use smartphones for everything, including browsing the web. 

An unoptimised mobile experience doesn’t just offer a poor user experience but pushes potential members away. 

If you wish to save time on optimising your site, you can use a membership plugin like SureMembers, which optimises your membership site for speed and mobile-friendliness right out of the box. 

Why Mobile-First Indexing Matters

Google has prioritised mobile-friendly sites since 2015, a move called mobile-first indexing. Now, they predominantly use the mobile version of content for indexing and ranking pages in search results.

These are the essential points to help you benefit from this:

• Implement responsive web design for a consistent experience on all devices. Use identical content on mobile and desktop, including text, images, videos, and links. 
• Include structured data on both versions to help Google understand your content. Metadata like titles and descriptions must also match between mobile and desktop. 
• Ensure visual content is high-quality, adequately formatted, and positioned. Use the exact alt text on mobile and desktop images.
• Optimise mobile pages to load quickly, reducing bounce rates. Slow load times frustrate users.

7 Benefits of a Mobile-Friendly WordPress Membership Website

There are some significant benefits to making your membership site mobile-friendly. It benefits both your users and your business.

1. Improved User Experience

One big reason to make your site mobile-friendly is that it improves how members use it. A mobile-friendly site makes it easy for them to read, click on stuff, and get around — even on small screens. 

That's important to keep members happy and get new ones. 

For example, Airbnb designed its app to be simple and easy to use on phones. The app has big pictures and short, clear text so people can easily browse places to stay.

It also has features like messaging inside the app and notifications to make communication smooth for guests and hosts. 

All this makes using Airbnb on your phone pleasant and intuitive. That good user experience keeps people coming back to book their accommodation.

2. Improved Website Speed

Mobile optimisation inherently involves reducing the page size so it loads quicker. 

That’s because you want people browsing on mobile data to have the same great experience as those using a wifi connection. 

Amazon found that even a 100 millisecond slower load time could mean 1% less sales. To avoid losing sales, they have worked hard to make their mobile website fast. 

They use tricks like lazy loading, where images load when you need them. They also limit significant, slow elements. 

Because of this, their mobile website loads super quickly, giving customers a smooth shopping experience. Some WordPress membership plugins like SureMembers are optimised well, so your site can offer additional functionality without slowing down! 

3. Improved Search Engine Rankings for Membership Sites

Google prefers sites that are mobile-optimized when ranking them in mobile search results. This means more people will visit your site from mobile devices than before.

Amazon gets way more customers using phones than computers. 

Early on, Amazon saw that having a website and apps that work well on phones was essential. So they made improving the mobile experience a big part of their digital marketing strategy. 

This helped Amazon get a ton of mobile traffic and sales. 

Now, over 50% of people shopping on Amazon use their phones. 

By focusing on mobile early, Amazon was able to get lots of mobile customers.

4. Increase Member Retention

Once you bring users to your site, you also need to retain them there. 

Consider this — if you bring a user from Instagram (where the mobile experience is excellent!) would they stay if your membership site requires them to zoom and scroll around? Probably not. 

An excellent mobile experience can help keep them on your site longer. 

Your membership site must also load quickly because 53% of people will abandon pages that take more than 3 seconds to load. 

5. Increased Engagement With Members Using Mobile Devices

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit your website but then leave right away without looking around. 

For instance, if 100 people came to your website but 50 left without checking any other page, your bounce rate would be 50%. 

This generally depends on how engaging your website is or if it requires effort to consume your content. 

With a well-thought-out mobile experience, your users will have a reason to stay on the page and look around. 

This is also where you can add interactive CTAs, show-case relevant links or videos, and direct them to different pages on your website for an engaging experience. 

6. Competitive Advantage in the Membership Site Market

Considering how many people use mobile devices to perform search queries and explore the web, having a mobile-optimized website gives you a competitive edge. 

The hotel industry is a prime example of how mobile optimisation can provide a competitive advantage. 

For instance, the Marriott Bonvoy app provides a seamless experience for guests, from booking to check-out. 

The app allows guests to check in and out, unlock their room with a digital key, chat with hotel staff, and even request room service. 

This level of convenience and personalisation enhances the guest experience, setting Marriott apart from competitors. 

7. Increased Conversions From Browsers to Members

More people will make purchases when websites are easy to use and have multiple payment options.  This is clear when you look at the example of NARs, a beauty brand that redesigned its website to be mobile-optimized.

The redesign was done to adapt to the web's new standards and benefit from mobile-focused search indexing. 

However, within some time of this change, they noticed increased conversions and revenue. 

When people visited the NARS website on their smartphones and made a purchase, they converted 54% more than before. Tablet conversions increased by 24% too. 

Optimising for mobile pays off quickly, depending on how many customers visit from their phones. 

Even with a smaller percentage of mobile users, you should still create a mobile-optimised and responsive membership website because of the variations in screen sizes and device types being released.

6 Key Components of a Mobile-Friendly Membership Site

Creating a membership website that works well on phones and tablets is essential so people can use it easily. 

Here are some key things to do:

• Speed it up! Make sure your site loads fast, even on slower internet connections. You can do this by temporarily making images smaller, storing some site information on people's devices, and limiting extra elements that have to load.
• Use the correct image formats, sizes, and compression so images look great but don't take forever to load on phones. Also, use responsive images that change sizes automatically to fit different screen sizes.
• Design easy, finger-friendly navigation menus. On small screens, use a “hamburger menu” with three lines to hide choices and pop them out when tapped. Make buttons big enough to tap quickly. Organise menu options logically so people can find what they need.
• Stick with simple, readable fonts that work on all devices instead of fancy custom fonts that might not load right on some phones. Choose fonts that are easy to read on small screens.
• Make the site responsive to different screen sizes, from phones to tablets to desktops. It should automatically adjust the layout to look fantastic on any device. 
• Keep sign up and checkout fast and easy. Use short forms, big prominent buttons like “Join Now,” and secure mobile payment options. You can customise your checkout page to make it more engaging and streamlined. 
• Let people sign up quickly with their existing social media accounts instead of creating new login info. This makes it super fast and convenient to join.

Powering the Future With Mobile-First Membership Sites

Phones account for over half of all website visits, so having a membership website that works well on phones is a must, not an option.

If your site isn't easy to use on phones, members will get frustrated and leave. But if it's fast, readable, and simple to navigate on mobile, members will love it. They'll stay engaged, renew their memberships, and tell friends to join.

Making your site mobile-friendly means focusing on speed, formatting images correctly, having an intuitive layout, using readable fonts, and making signing up and checking out easy. 

That’s where a plugin like SureMembers can help — it handles the technicalities in optimising your site so you can focus on engaging with your members. 

Do these things right; your members will keep returning on any device. So don't wait – make your membership website mobile-friendly now!

Author Bio – Sujay is the CEO and Co-Founder of Brainstorm Force, the company behind Astra. He's passionate about the online space and writes articles to help entrepreneurs and freelancers succeed online. A father, a Youtube addict, and the brain behind numerous world-class products, you can connect with him on Twitter. @sujaypawar.​