Are you tired of losing potential customers because your website isn’t easily accessible on their mobile devices? Don’t worry, you’re not alone! In today’s digital age, it’s crucial for businesses to have a mobile-friendly website. Not only does it make it easier for customers to access your site and make purchases, but it also improves your search engine ranking. In this blog, we’ll walk you through the steps to make your website mobile-friendly and ensure that your business stays competitive in today’s market. So let’s get started!
What Does Mobile-Friendly Really Mean?
A mobile-friendly website is one that displays a different version of your website to users who visit your site via their mobile devices. This will give them a better experience.
This can be achieved in a variety of ways:
- Responsive design – Your website’s design adapts to the screen size. This is whether you are changing the size of your desktop tab or browsing from a tablet or mobile device.
- Dynamic serving – Visitors are shown a customized version of the site based on their device.
- A mobile application – In some cases, it makes sense to have a separate app for your mobile audience. However, if this is the case, you need to ensure that your website is accessible to people who do not want to download the app.
Responsive design should be your goal. It’s also what Google recommends. We think that it is worth editing the auto-generated mobile website. You want to create a great user experience and not just an acceptable one.
We recommend that you get in touch with a professional web developer if you believe a mobile app could work for your website.
1. Select a Responsive Template or Theme for Mobile Use
This is the first step and it’s very important: Choose a responsive mobile theme or template.
It’s so crucial to have a mobile-responsive design, and it is something that every website builder should include in all of their templates. Take this example:
Squarespace – Has water-tight mobile responsiveness, and would be our top choice if you’re building a site from scratch and view the mobile experience as a top priority.
Wix – All templates are mobile-responsive. However, always check the mobile view before you make any changes. You’ll need to tweak Wix sites because they are so customizable. Sometimes big changes won’t translate as smoothly, so you might have to make some adjustments.
WordPress – You should ensure that your website is built using a CMS such as WordPress. Using a CMS like WordPress can help ensure that your website is easy to manage and update. With a CMS, you don’t need to have any technical expertise or knowledge of HTML or CSS in order to create and manage a website. You can simply use the user-friendly interface to add and edit content, change the appearance of your site, and manage other aspects of your website.
Search for “responsive theme” in WordPress’ theme library or on a third-party site such as Themeforest. You should read reviews and, if possible, check out any websites that use this theme from your phone to get a better idea of the experience.
2. Strip Back Your Content
So you have chosen a beautiful responsive template or theme, and now everything is set. Wrong!
Although choosing the right theme or template is an important step, it’s just one of many steps you can take to create a mobile experience.
It’s now time to look at your website’s automated mobile view and take it down.
Distill your offer
You should identify the main purpose of the page that you are on and make it prominent on your mobile version.
This is an example from Trainline.
The homepage encourages users to search for train tickets. This form is prominent on the mobile version. This would be too pushy on the desktop version. But it works well on the mobile version.
Avoid long chunks of text
It’s especially important to keep your website copy concise and to the point for mobile users, as they may be using a smaller screen and may have less patience for lengthy content. Mobile users are often looking for specific information quickly, and they may be more likely to leave a website if they find the content difficult to read or understand.
Shorten forms
Long forms can be tedious at best. But what if you have a mobile device? Forget it! You will lose your readers quicker than you can say, “This is a mandatory field”. You should ensure that every form you display on mobile asks for only the essential information.
3. Make Images and CSS As Light As Possible
It’s always a good idea to make your website light. But what does this mean? Each element of your website has a virtual weight – regardless of whether it’s an image or video.
Google is very clear that website speed is an important ranking factor. Slow websites are not good. Websites that are too heavy will be lost to those on search engine result pages (SERPs).
This is even more true when it comes to mobile. You’ll be able to understand why if you have ever attempted to load a website from a remote location only to see each element disappear painfully slowly.
What can you do?
Reduce your images
It is essential that you compress any image you upload to your website – desktop or mobile – using an online tool such as Kraken.io. This will greatly reduce the size of your images without compromising the image quality.
Host your videos together with a third party
Uploading videos to third parties and embedding them on your website will ensure that the video’s virtual weight is kept on your site.
Wistia has been a popular choice, but Youtube also works. You’ll need to turn off autoplay so that unrelated videos don’t play after you. This is how you do it:
- Go to your WordPress post or page
- Find the embedded code and click on the “text” tab
- Find src=”youtubeurlhere”
- Add ?autoplay=0&rel=0 to youtubeurlhere
- The code should now read src=”youtubeurlhere?autoplay=0&rel=0”
- Click ‘Update’
4. Avoid Flash
Flash is often used for animations. However, it is generally not supported by mobile devices so it is best to avoid it.
5. Change Button Size or Placement
Every website has buttons that link to other sections or forms. If the button isn’t in the right place or the wrong size, it can quickly turn into a bad button for mobile.
Consider how you hold your phone. You’re probably using your thumbs to reach almost everything.
This is where you should place CTAs on a mobile website:
Now that you have your buttons placed in the correct place, it is time to adjust their size. This generally means that you will need to increase their size. It’s much more difficult to click with a thumb than with a mouse.
6. Space Out Your Links
We’ve already spoken about how difficult it is to click with a thumb rather than a mouse. That brings us to our next point. Take a look at your links!
You’ll need to make sure that all hyperlinks are removed from your mobile website.
- Don’t place them too close to each other to prevent people from accidentally clicking on the wrong one.
- Link to pages that are mobile-optimized to create a seamless user experience.
7. Use Large Fonts That Are Easily Readable
It is recommended to use a font size of at minimum 14px for desktop. However, you should also test it on your mobile version. You may find that it appears a little smaller on the mobile version.
Double-check the readability of your font. While it’s possible to experiment with fonts on a desktop, this is unlikely to work on mobile. However, fonts should be consistent across all platforms.
Mobile view gives you a smaller space to work with. You can use line breaks or images to space text on a desktop. To prevent them from merging, you can bolden or capitalize different lines of text on mobile.
8. Eliminate Pop-Ups
Pop-ups work well on a desktop site version if they are used with care. They are used on many pages on Lux, as you may have noticed.
Pop-ups should be avoided when using mobile devices. They are not only easier to manage on a smaller screen, but they can also be difficult to tailor to trigger at certain moments such as when the user exits your screen.
9. Test Regularly
Test it to see how mobile-friendly your site is! This can be done in two ways:
Google’s mobile-friendly tools allow you to run URLs
Google offers a mobile-friendly testing tool that anyone can use to determine how mobile-friendly a URL is. This could be a page within your website or a homepage.
Try different sizes of devices on your desktop
You can test how responsive your website is by simply changing the shape of the tab you have open. You will notice that your site starts to contract and transform into a more mobile-friendly version as you reduce its width.
Also, you can quickly check the mobile look of any webpage by right-clicking on it, selecting ‘Inspect’, and then clicking on the icon for two screens in the toolbar at the top.
How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Website: Wrap Up
In conclusion, making a mobile-friendly website is crucial for businesses today. With the increasing number of people accessing the internet through their smartphones, it is essential to ensure that your website is easily accessible and user-friendly on these devices. Some key steps to follow when creating a mobile-friendly website include using responsive design, optimizing images and content for mobile viewing, and testing the site on multiple devices. By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your website is accessible to all users, regardless of the device they are using, and ultimately drive more traffic and conversions for your business.
Get a Professional Mobile-Friendly Website That Converts Visitors Into Customers
Are you tired of losing potential customers because your website isn’t mobile-friendly? Do you want to increase your online conversions and sales? Lux Digital Marketing can help!
Our team of experienced St Pete web designers and SEO experts will create a professional, mobile-friendly website that is tailored to your business needs and goals. We understand the importance of having a website that is not only visually appealing but also user-friendly and easy to navigate on all devices.
Other Services We Offer:
- Search Engine Optimization
- On Page SEO
- Off Page SEO
- Web Design
- Google Maps Marketing
- Most importantly, ranking you number 1 on Google!
Don’t miss out on the benefits of a professional mobile-friendly website. Contact Lux Digital Marketing today and start turning your website visitors into paying customers.
