Google stepped up its mobile game this week with an announcement that it was putting into play "faulty redirect warnings". This only happens when redirects are set to move the visitor automatically to the mobile version – when the redirect only takes the visitor to a home page and not to the page they were looking for. 

This scenario occurs when one is searching on his / her phone or some tablets and the search results point to a normal site page but you are on a mobile device. It can only happen if your site has a mobile redirect to your homepage or special landing page instead of the actual page the results come from. Google will now display a search result with an odd message saying "May open the site's homepage". Enough to decrease click throughs?  Perhaps.

I am constantly counseling clients about mobile practices and though Google really wants everyone to have a responsive template that adjusts to the device, in reality setting up a website with any mobile capability is frequently problematic for several reasons.

The hurdles to mobile and responsive design are:

1. Any type of responsive design or mobile site version is not simple HTML. It's no longer a do it yourself project.
2. Paying to have something done can get quite expensive if you have it done right and have it work well within your desired design.
3. As usual in the world of the internet, there are too many folks in the field who promise much but who don't understand design principles or the ramifications of many issues of web design such a navigability and load time (yes, it's still very, very important). I'm starting to find major corporate websites obviously done thru tools – the design principles don't change if you want responsive yet I'm seeing some incredibly major mistakes by businesses who may be listening to their IT team instead of actually using a real web designer.
4. Easy tools exist to create responsive templates – any person with some CSS and web experience can learn to use them. Cruising job openings for web and front end designer / developers show the prevalent use of tools like Bootstrap. I was fascinated by this description: it's to "help nerds do awesome stuff on the web". Ahem, I have say to that really does describe this trend. Tools for non-designers. 'Nough said.
5. Each website has a different purpose. Some don't even have much a base for mobile users – some almost don't need a desktop version. For instance, one of my clients is a wholesale plant nursery. Her customers are frequently standing in a field or on someone's lawn needing to place an order. My Zen Cart mobile with an automatic redirect is perfect for that business. But I advised another business that sells senior adaptive products to put his money elsewhere. Though his customer base is not limited to elder seniors, in general most do have desktop computers in addition to mobile devices.
6. Ecommerce is still seeing phone searching leading to tablet and then to desktop purchasing. Sometimes having a mobile site can be wonderful for the user standing in a store, but does easy purchase on one's phone really increase your website sales? The jury is out on that so far.
7. It's a fad. Okay, so not really but the way it's being approached shows a real lack of knowledge on the part of professionals and site owners. We pros all respond to a changing market. The buzz word now is responsive templates. I had a client tell me that Google is going to stop indexing site that don't have responsive design. Ahem (again), so Google is going to stop indexing most of the web?  Sure. So obviously she misunderstood. Site owners need to educate themselves and not just follow trends. Making good decisions based on needs and a plan is the only way to proceed.
8. The website coding is the first place to start looking at whether any mobile option is possible. Much open source is not conducive to installing an effective mobile directed version. Zen Cart is definitely a case in point here. A well done mobile template has to rewrite or edit much of the 96 plus template files. That makes upgrading almost a nightmare and that's why I developed a separate mobile version for Zen Cart sites. Done right that approach can be a real solution to real mobile problems.
9. A recent contest on a template site highlighted the another side to ready made (usually open source) templates. In that case, nearly every winning design broke major web design rules. Those templates are now featured on a site that sells templates. There is no question the folks that chose those winning templates had no web design chops. I've counseled against most ready made templates for years and the Zen Cart core team is working hard to reconfigure the template system so the really crappy templates will no longer be able to be used. That's not just web design in this case but how and why these templates are created – templates meant to be adaptable across many platforms and not just Zen Cart. They make a mess that become impossible to edit later. Many Zen Cart pros even refuse to work on such carts. I always counsel a client to have a custom template created that works for design and selling purposes. Function over design every time, folks.
10. Do you really want to end up with a website that you can no longer edit in any way? Are you ready to deal with new technologies? Do you have someone who is going to be around for changes and edits later? This is not do it yourself territory but gaining a complicated website may make it much harder to get changes made. Just be aware – poor responsive design (from all views – design and function) can create way more problems that it can solve.