6 Tips to make your Website Mobile Friendly

A recent study revealed that almost 44% of respondents would rather separate from their significant other for a month, than part with their mobile phones. 48% are prepared to stay with their in-laws, and a whopping 72% would give up alcohol in a heartbeat if that means they can keep their phones. 

I think it’s pretty safe to say that our relationship with mobile phones is a serious one, and only set to grow stronger in the future. No longer are mobile phones merely an exciting technological tool to help us connect, and make informed decisions in our daily lives, it has evolved into so much more. With a little over half of all internet traffic coming from mobile devices globally, any business must make sure their website is fully prepared for mobile viewing. In this article, we will look at 6 tips to help you make your website mobile-friendly.

6 Tips to Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

Make it Responsive

Making a website responsive means designing it in a way that lets the layout change based on the size of the screen you are accessing it from. Web Browsers can detect what kind of device you are viewing the site from, and with the proper coding, can display the site in a way that is easier to see and use based on the device you are using. Responsiveness is also a win for your SEO strategy, as search engines rank sites with this flexibility higher on average.

Emphasize Content

Make sure you prioritize how you present content on your website so that users can quickly and easily find what they are looking for. Some useful tips include:

Progressive Disclosure Design Patterns

By revealing questionnaire tasks in a step by step manner users are less likely to feel overwhelmed or make mistakes.

Simplify your Microcopy

Make sure your microscopy uses simple language that is inclusive to effectively inform your audience on what action to take on your site.

Skimmable information

Make sure to place your most important information on the top of a page with clearly outlined headers to allow your user to quickly skim through the information.

Sizing

Make sure you use large font sizes that are easy to read and large call to action buttons that are easy to navigate. The smaller screen sizes of mobile devices can make smaller elements on your site difficult to read and click on. A good rule of thumb is using a font size of at least 14px or larger when designing for mobile devices. Speaking of thumbs; the most ergonomic place to put a call to action button on a mobile device is at the bottom opposite from the thumb.

Straight forward Layout

Because the screen real estate is so limited on your mobile device it is very important to keep your design layout as simple and straightforward as possible. You want to avoid clutter and too much scrolling at all costs as both these can lead to users leaving your page prematurely. Make sure you boil down your mobile page to only the most necessary and important information.

Fast Site Speed

In this day and age of immediate results at our fingertips, a slow mobile experience is a surefire way to drive users away. An ideal load speed would be anything between 1 to 3 seconds. There are several tactics you can take to reduce your mobile site speed. Some of the main ones are:

• Compress your images and CSS
• Avoid or minimize the use of redirects
• Make sure your web hosting service is fast
• Implement caching at all levels
• Convert your mobile website to faster formats

Regular Analysis of your Mobile Site

Make sure to perform regular mobile testing as part of your general website maintenance. Every so often, make sure you access your website on a mobile device and see what kind of experience users get from it. Doing a regular analysis of your mobile site is the best way to catch small issues that might make the user experience less than a great.

To get an unbiased idea of how your mobile site is doing, you can utilize Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool. This tool uses your mobile site URL and gives you quick feedback on how mobile-friendly your site is. Part of the feedback includes a list of recommendations to make your mobile experience better.

Final thoughts

With the extremely fast and constant pace with which mobile technology is changing, your mobile-friendly strategy will have to change with it. What works today might be outdated in just a few years or months. The research indicates that the use of mobile devices to access the internet is likely to snowball over the next couple of years. Tips discussed in this article are a great jumping-off point, but regular analysis of your mobile user experience needs to be something you constantly do.

Planning and implementing an effective mobile-friendly strategy for your site could seem like a daunting task if faced alone. It is always better to have a dedicated team of experts on your side to make sure your mobile site is optimized with the most current best practices top of mind. NAV43 is an SEO marketing agency that specializes in optimizing sites to deliver astounding success. Contact us today to get started.