The Importance of Having a Mobile-Friendly Website
In today’s world, more and more people are using their mobile devices to access the internet. Odds are, if you own a website or online store, more than half of your website traffic probably comes from mobile devices. This means that if your website is not mobile-friendly, you are missing out on a large percentage of potential customers.
A mobile-friendly website is one that is designed to be easily viewed and navigated on a mobile device. This means that the text and images should be easy to read, the navigation should be clear and concise, and the buttons should be large enough to be easily tapped. Indeed, the experience of the site should be adapted to the aspect ratio and resolution of a mobile device, which means many experiences created for desktop may need to change.
BENEFITS OF MOBILE-FRIENDLY WEBSITES
IMPROVED USER EXPERIENCE
An improved user experience on mobile will make users more likely to stay on your website and take the action you want them to, such as making a purchase or signing up for your email list. Users will be able to easily read the text, navigate the website, and find the information they are looking for.
IMPROVED SEO RANKINGS
Google and other search engines now favor mobile-friendly websites in their search results. This means that if your website is not mobile-friendly, you may not be as visible in search results, which can hurt your traffic and conversions.
IMPROVED BUSINESS PERFORMANCE
If your website is not mobile-friendly, you may be losing out on potential sales and leads. This can lead to lost revenue and increased marketing costs. Mobile-friendly websites are easier to use and navigate, which makes it more likely that visitors will take action.
HOW TO CREATE A MOBILE-FRIENDLY EXPERIENCE
There are many ways to ensure your site or store has an experience that is optimized for mobile devices. Here are some great ways to ensure your site is mobile-friendly:
Use a responsive design. A responsive design means that your website will automatically adjust its layout to fit the screen size of the device it is being viewed on. This is the best way to ensure that your website looks good and is easy to use on all devices.
Some easy ways to check this are to load your site on a mobile device and poke around, noting which experiences aren’t what you’d expect on your mobile device. From a web browser, you can also right click, choose Inspect, and in the developer tools window that appears there is a button for a mobile/desktop toggle. Selecting this will show what your site will appear like on mobile. There are selections to choose different devices to investigate what your site will look like and to check your site experiences.
Use a mobile-friendly theme or template. There are many mobile-friendly themes and templates available for popular website builders. These themes are designed to make your website look good and be easy to use on mobile devices.
If designing a website or store, utilizing something like Figma’s auto layout can be a huge help and ensure responsiveness is built into your process.
Test your website on a variety of devices. As mentioned above, it is important to test your website on a variety of devices to make sure it is working properly. This will help you identify any problems and fix them before your mobile visitors see them.
This one can be difficult, as most site owners don’t have every device possible to test on – I, for instance, have moved away from Apple devices in favor of Android, but a huge portion of the population accesses the internet via iPhone or iPad so I need to know what that experience is like.
Besides utilizing the obvious option of viewing your website on each different mobile device users could be using, more practical options include utilizing the developer tools to toggle mobile viewing for different device types, or to utilize testing tools such as BrowserStack or Lambda Test to view your site across various devices.
Keep your website up-to-date. As new mobile devices are released, it is important to keep your website up-to-date to ensure that it works properly on them. This may involve making changes to your website’s design or code.
OTHER MOBILE-FRIENDLY TIPS
Use large fonts and clear text. The text on your website should be large enough to be easily read on a small screen. This means using a font size of at least 16px. You should also avoid using too much text on a single page, as this can make it difficult to read. If pages do contain a ton of text, utilizing section anchors and sub-navigation options, as well as functionality to return to the top or actionable part of a page, should be utilized.
Use simple navigation menus. The navigation menus on your website should be easy to understand and use. Avoid using long menus with too many options. Instead, focus on providing your visitors with the most important information and features. Mobile navigation is usually streamlined and condensed nicely behind a hamburger menu that is always accessible.
Avoid using too many images or videos. Images and videos can make your website more visually appealing, but they can also slow down the loading time. If you do use images or videos, make sure they are optimized for mobile devices.
It’s important to note that not all users will be accessing your site or store on the highest quality of connections – some users will have spotty mobile network connections and you want to ensure your site works for as many users as possible.Optimize your images for mobile devices. When you upload images to your website, make sure to optimize them for mobile devices. This means reducing the file size of the images so that they load quickly. Utilizing a Digital Asset Manager can help with compression, and changing file formats to one such as WebP can be very helpful in reducing image size.
Make sure your website loads quickly. A slow-loading website will frustrate your mobile visitors and make them more likely to leave. Make sure your website loads quickly by optimizing your images, reducing the amount of JavaScript on your pages, and using a content delivery network (CDN).
If using Google Chrome, back in Developer Tools (Right-click -> Inspect), there is an option (>>), usually included across the top for additional options, one of which is Lighthouse. This is a very popular testing format specifically by Google and is the industry standard in a lot of ways. You can specifically select to run a mobile report for various benchmarks like performance, SEO, best practices, etc., and it will provide a score from 0 to 100 and offer suggestions to improve your score. Web.dev is another great resource for similar scoring and benchmarking.
Ensuring you have strong, mobile-friendly experience can be key to your online site or store success. When it comes to mobile, keep it simple and streamlined, allow users to do what you want them to do quickly and efficiently, and consistently test to ensure the experience is what you’d expect.
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