As more people do the majority of their internet browsing from their phones, it’s critical that your website is mobile-friendly. Whether you engage a web developer to help with some of these steps or implement them on your own, the following are a few simple ways to make your website mobile-friendly.
What is a mobile-friendly site?
A mobile-friendly website is a site that is designed to display properly on smaller screens, such as smartphones, or tablets. Standard desktop websites do not render well on these devices, whereas a mobile-optimized site adjusts to the smaller screen size and formats the content and interface in a mobile-friendly manner, making it much easier to read. Not sure if your website is mobile friendly? There’s an easy way to find out! Google has a mobile-friendly website checker that you can use to find out! All good? Then you’re done reading this article and congratulations! Didn’t get such a great result? Keep reading to see what you need to do to fix it.
Why is a mobile-friendly site important?
Having a mobile-friendly website brings with it several key advantages, including improved search visibility, improved user experience, increased lead generation, and improved brand identity. If someone tries to access your website from their smartphone or tablet and the load time is too slow or the site is difficult to read or navigate, you’ll quickly lose that site visitor. Having a mobile-friendly site is a must!
Make sure your website is responsive
The best way to ensure your website will render correctly on a variety of devices is to make it a responsive website in the first place. If you already have an established website created and it’s not responsive, it will require a rebuild in order to make it responsive. Depending on your platform, this isn’t as arduous a process as it sounds, but it’s best left to an experienced web developer.
Make it easy to navigate your website
Even websites that are responsive may not be mobile-friendly. Reducing the steps visitors must take to find the information they’re looking for will make their overall experience on your website better. Put the most sought out information easily accessible from the home page so visitors won’t have to click numerous times to get to the information they want. Not sure which pages of your site are the most popular? Check out Google Analytics and look for your top site content or engage the help of a small business marketing professional to do that analysis for you and make recommendations.
Keep your website design clean and simple
A website that’s too cluttered is extremely hard to navigate on a smaller screen. Keep the website streamlined, avoid using excessive pop-ups, and limit the animation if possible. Make sure your font size is big enough to render well on mobile devices, and don’t overload any individual page with image files that take a long time to load.
Keep an eye on your website speed
Related to having a clean and simple design, overly cluttered websites tend to be slow to load, which is a death sentence to mobile users. Consider these two facts from Forrester Consulting: 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less and 40% of consumers will wait no more than three seconds for a web page to render before abandoning the site. There are several easily addressed factors that can slow a website down:
- Unoptimized images
- Ads
- Not using a content delivery network (CDN)
- Poor website hosting
For images, either optimize them before you upload them to your site or use a plugin that optimizes upon upload such as Smush for WordPress sites. If your site uses ads to help generate revenue, keep them to a minimum (or better yet, get rid of them). A web developer can help you use a CDN and can also help determine if the hosting plan, you’re using is sufficient for your website’s needs.
Having a mobile-friendly website is important for small businesses. If your site doesn’t perform well on mobile devices, follow these steps to improve performance. It will improve the visitor experience and can result in more business!
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