8 Best Tips to Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
A website that is optimized both for desktop computers and mobile devices is considered to be a priority nowadays. The number of people who are surfing the Internet on their mobile devices is growing rapidly! Not to mention that Google’s latest algorithm, Mobilegeddon, is punishing websites that are not adjusted for mobile devices by decreasing their rank in the search results. You can implement the best marketing and SEO strategies, but you risk losing a good number of your visitors if the adjustments to a mobile friendly platform are not done right.
Remember: just because your website can be reached on a mobile device, that doesn’t mean the job is done! There are many things to consider in order to please your mobile viewers and these are the essential ones:
1. Make it a “two-in-one” website
Creating a separate website for mobile devices is definitely not a good idea, since that way you will have duplicate content that can only get you penalized by Google. More than that, mobile device users are not that much different from the ones browsing on their desktop computers, so there’s no reason to separate your content. To sum up – under no circumstances should you create a website separately for mobile devices.
2. Be responsive (when it comes to design)
Your website should look good and be easy to use on any device. There are two ways you can make your website responsive:
- If you have the right web design knowledge, by using HTML and CSS, you can resize, shrink (or make larger) the content in order to make it the perfect fit for any screen. This means that the web page should automatically adapt to the visitors’ screen size.
- In addition, you can also choose to use a website builder whose elements and blocks are already adjusted to mobile devices.
3. Think about the font and button size
When using a mobile phone, the size of buttons and fonts is really important. Instead of a zoom option, make it easy for your users to tap the buttons and read the text. It’s up to you to choose the right size, but ensure your visitors don’t hit the wrong button by mistake!
4. Back-to-basics design
Keep the design simple, since your readers are interested in finding information quickly. Make sure to include the search bar on your home page and to organize the categories well. Do not make the background too flashy and remove those unnecessary banners!
5. His majesty – content!
Yes, it’s all about the content even when it comes to responsive design. You should be brief in your story telling, since mobile users don’t want to scroll their way through their phones for hours just to read one article. Just look at your smartphone screen and adjust the amount of text to it. Don’t forget that even if shorter, your posts and articles shouldn’t be lacking in information.
6. Make the images responsive as well
If you have doubts when it comes to the importance of high resolution images, just remember how much you enjoy scrolling through all the photos on Instagram. To keep up with the standards, you must provide your visitors with high-quality images. The latest models of mobile and tablet devices have screens that support much higher resolutions than the ones desktop computers have.
7. Don’t forget the videos
If you have some videos on your website, you should adapt them to mobile devices as well. If you don’t, they will seem quite different to your mobile viewers. But don’t worry, there’s no need for complicated converting, just use YouTube videos. They are already mobile responsive!
8. Test, test, test…
You should test if your mobile-responsive website is easy and accessible enough for your viewers to use it on their mobile devices. Prioritize the most common tasks your readers will perform on mobile devices and check if your site can support them. This way you will double-check if you did a good job with the design, section organization, navigation, etc. Try to use your website on different devices and make sure it looks good on every single one. Think as a reader who is browsing through your website on his mobile phone while rushing to work, be honest to yourself, ask your friends to test the site and appreciate their advice. Every time you want to change something – test again!
Ana Grasic
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- 8 Best Tips to Make Your Website Mobile Friendly - May 12, 2019
