Maybe you went with the cheapest website design firm to put your recruitment website together. Maybe you did it yourself using a template site. Maybe your nephew put it together because he’s just so good with those things. And they all might have told you that your website was mobile ready. They’re probably not lying. They’re just not telling the whole story. The phone that changed the way we browse the internet is nearly a decade old and “mobile ready” simply isn’t enough anymore. You may not even realize your mobile recruitment website isn’t optimized, but here are a few clues.

Mobile Is Not a Desktop Mini-Me

If your mobile recruitment website is just a shrunken-head version of your desktop site, please seek immediate and professional help. You have either seriously shorted yourself in terms of today’s digital experience or you are computing in the not-so-distant past and by way of some cyber wormhole are reading an article published in the future (if the latter, Powerball numbers for April 1, 2017, are as follows: 9, 32, 36, 44, 65, with a bright red 1; find me and share your riches). But in all seriousness, your mobile recruitment website needs to be optimized for those smaller screens and for the touch capabilities on which they rely. This means bigger copy and icons, while not sacrificing a unifying theme from the desktop to the mobile recruitment website.

Missing the Mark

If your mobile recruitment website is not truly mobile optimized, then your potential clients and candidates are probably missing the mark, quite literally. Mobile optimization is more than just making the content fit the screen of a mobile device. It also means making the site responsive to the touch. If your links are not “thumb-friendly” then site visitors will get frustrated trying to pinch and zoom their way to the vital information you have and they need. And mobile site visitors have little patience. If your mobile recruitment website makes it difficult for visitors to successfully select links, then they will move on to more accommodating sites.

It’s the Little Things

One of the most understated issues as it pertains to lacking mobile optimization is the small gaps in functionality and design that ever so slightly alter the landscape of your mobile recruitment website. Owners of these sites gloss over what they think are small issues and tell themselves that their services and content are so great that site visitors will also gloss over them. Unfortunately, appearances do matter and some wonky formatting on your text or an improperly positioned image can make your mobile recruitment website look amateurish, thus making some clients and candidates view you as an amateur.

The Missing Link

A fully optimized mobile recruitment website has benefits far beyond that of your desktop version. When a visitor to a desktop site is interested in your services, they find your phone number and then get their phone to place the call. But maybe they don’t. Maybe they need to check one more thing, or maybe they see a notification and get distracted with other business. However, when that visitor is on their phone viewing your site, they see your number and just select it to call you, no time for distractions or other business. If you think this is farfetched, consider the short attention span of web users. Studies have shown nearly half of site visitors abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds. Not properly linking phone numbers, email and physical addresses can mean clients lost. A mobile recruitment website can be a powerful addition to your digital ecosystem, but only if wielded properly.

Adam is a copy writer, content specialist and editor with Recruiters Websites, a web design firm specializing in websites for the recruiting and staffing industry.