If you run a website and it’s not optimized for mobile devices, you are losing most of current traffic. How can you avoid this?
According to a report, more than 61% of total web traffic comes from mobile devices, whereas it’s only 39% from desktops.
As you can see from this graph, the number is continuously rising. This clearly says that people are more likely to use mobile devices than desktops.
So, if you run a website and it’s not optimized for mobile devices, you are behind the curve and losing most of your current traffic. Furthermore, you couldn’t rank your web pages higher on Google. In November 2016, Google released the “Mobile-first Indexing” update, which means they now look at the mobile version of a page’s content to evaluate its relevance to the user.
However, how can you make your website mobile-friendly?
This post will share the top 10 tips that will help you create a mobile-friendly website. But first,
As the name implies, mobile-friendly websites are designed, developed, and optimized for desktops, mobile devices, and tablets.
That means texts, images, buttons, or other elements on mobile devices are easy to read and navigate without any manual action. In other words, mobile content is easy to consume.
Here’s what a mobile-friendly website looks like.
Before optimizing your website for mobile devices, let’s check whether it’s mobile-friendly and, if not, what the issue is.
This may seem a complex task. Fortunately, Google has a mobile-friendly testing tool that allows web admins to check whether their web page is mobile-friendly.
Enter your URL, and it will start analyzing your page.
As you can see, the webpage is mobile-friendly, and there are no issues.
However, if your website or web page isn’t mobile-friendly, follow the optimization steps below.
Here are the top 10 tips you can implement today to make your website mobile-friendly.
The first step to make your website mobile-optimized is to choose a mobile-responsive theme or template.
A mobile-responsive theme is important because it improves the overall user experience and has a significant SEO advantage. Fortunately, most desktops and popular website builders, such as Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, etc., are highly customizable. If you use a CMS like WordPress, ensure your install theme is responsive.
Go to Appearance > Themes > Add New to install a mobile responsive theme.
Search for “responsive theme” in the search bar. This will bring up all the responsive themes in the WordPress theme gallery.
Also, don’t forget to check reviews before installing.
No matter how responsive your website is, you will lose customers and leads if it takes ages to load.
Google’s study shows that 32% of users leave a mobile website if it fails to load in 3 seconds. Here’s a report by Google that shows how website speed impacts bounce rates.
A solution is to implement speed optimization tactics to accelerate your website’s speed. Here are the top steps below:
Switch to premium hosting: Website hosting should be the top priority when optimizing your website for speed.
If your website is large and gets lots of traffic, you should invest in premium hosting, such as VPS dedicated. Here’s an article about WP Engine alternatives that offer premium hostings.
Start using a CDN: A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a highly distributed server platform that works together to provide faster web content delivery. In short, it helps to speed up your website. Cloudflare is a free CDN service you can use.
Optimize images: Before adding images to your website, you should resize and optimize them because unoptimized images are large and slow down the website.
TinyPNG is a great image compression tool. It compresses images without losing their actual quality, so you can see the difference between an unoptimized and optimized image.
Navigating a website is complex, and navigating on mobile devices can be even more complicated. Luckily, there are some ways you can make your site’s navigation easier. One way is to add a search function.
You may not want people to wander around your website to find an article they are looking for, which often frustrates them.
People can discover more content in seconds if your site has a search function. Take Amazon, for example.
Let’s say someone visits Amazon’s website to buy a working laptop under $400. And, if he wants to see more expensive laptops, he can use the search function to view all the models quickly.
Similarly, you can add a search bar to your website’s top, bottom, or sidebar.
Mobile screens are much smaller than computer and laptop screens, so the content on both screens looks different.
On bigger devices, each element, such as menus, sidebars, etc., is easily visible to users. However, this isn’t the case with smartphones and tablets.
As you can see from the image, the menus on the standard website are not visible unless you tap the zoom-in button. This will hurt your conversion goals badly.
The next image shows the website is well-optimized for mobile devices and looks pretty good. All of the information, including menus, is easily visible.
People visit a website to get information or a quick solution. If your content is helpful and engaging, they will stick to it and revisit your website.
But, having unnecessary pop-ups, especially on mobile devices, drives your visitors away. Nobody has time to find the “x” button to close the pop-up; most of the time, they just click away and find another website.
So, if you want to improve users’ experience on your website, avoid adding pop-ups.
If you think pop-ups are too crucial for generating leads or building an email subscriber list, disable them on mobile devices and limit them to 2-3 on desktops.
Reading on a small screen is much harder if the font is tiny. Of course, it’s the same for bigger screens, too.
So, using at least a 14px font size for all devices is better.
To test this, write a 50-100 words paragraph and preview it on desktop and mobile devices. This will show you if the font shows up a little small and increase it a bit.
To maximize readability for all devices, you can space out text with line breaks and bold the important words. You can also use capital letters and bold font for the section’s headline.
It’s also a good practice to stick with one font and use it everywhere on your site. Because using multiple fonts requires a web browser to download them to highlight them to the users. This process might affect your website’s loading speed. Also, read how to choose the right size and format for icons.
Buttons are primarily used to do something on a website. You can add it on forms, download or checkout pages, dialog boxes, etc.
While adding a button, make sure it looks great on all devices, especially on mobile, since we deal with small screens.
Moreover, the text on a button should be visible immediately. If your visitors don’t understand what’s written on the button, why would they bother clicking on it?
Poorly designed buttons could hurt your conversation rates.
Here is an example of it.
The way you test your font size on mobile, you should do the same with buttons.
Another great way to make your website mobile-friendly is by using media queries.
You don’t need to use media queries if your website is mobile responsive. However, you may need to use media queries if it’s a custom website or page.
Media queries deliver tailored stylesheets to desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. In simple words, media queries automatically detect the screen size and display a set of CSS that you have set.
Here’s an example.
@media screen and (max-width: 640px) {
#container, #header, #content, #footer {
float: none;
width: auto;
}
p{ font-size: 14px; }
}This code tells us that if the screen is less than 640px, all the CSS code inside the media query will apply.
A webform is a great medium for visitors to contact you. We generally use different forms like contact, subscription, and registration forms.
But if you ask your visitors to provide a lot of information, they will probably leave it blank and click away.
It’s easier to navigate and fill out a form on bigger screens. But it’s different on mobile devices. So, you should be well-planned about what you ask on your forms.
For example, you shouldn’t ask for billing details on the registration form.
One of the best ways to ensure your website provides a good user experience is to regularly perform tests.
You must test your website on different devices whenever you update or modify your content. So, spend some time on your website and see if there’s anything that needs fixing. Also, you can use Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool, which I mentioned before.
This works well if you are testing one or two pages. But if your website is large, this process may take a long time.
Fortunately, there’s a great way to automate this process and determine which pages are not mobile-optimized.
First, add your website to Google Search Console. Once added, navigate to the Mobile Usability section under “Enhancements.”
It will show you when Google detects mobile usability issues on your website.
Click on the error types to view which pages have been affected.
Now, all you have to do is fix the issue and click submit for validation.
If you don’t optimize your website for mobile devices, you are losing most of your current traffic. Even search engines like Google don’t prioritize sites not optimized for mobile.
Generally, a desktop screen is generally bigger, so it doesn’t require much optimization.
However, showing all the content properly on smaller screens is difficult and requires additional effort.
In this article, we have shared the top 10 tips for creating a mobile-friendly website. After reading them, all you have to do is implement them. And don’t forget to test your site regularly.
Once you have completed all of these steps, if you still wish to optimize further, you might consider implementing Progressive Web App (PWA), an advanced web technology, to your site. With PWA, your mobile website can have the look and feel of a native mobile application. Also, for Magento merchants, especially those who often have to deal with performance issues, Magento PWA can help improve your mobile page speed dramatically.
About the author: Jyoti Ray is the founder of WPMyWeb.com, which specializes in affiliate marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He writes for or has been featured on JeffBullas, SurveyAnyplace, SearchEngineWatch, and more.
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