Mobile Friendly Website Makeover: Does Your Website Need One?

The world has long shifted to mobile. Today, people have faster and more powerful smartphones and mobile devices, coupled with easy access to an internet connection. Rather than use a desktop, it is more convenient for users to reach for their mobile device to perform a lot of web-based functions – including performing transactions over the internet, looking up a product or searching for a store in the nearby vicinity.

With more and more users turning to their mobile devices to access your website (or your competitors’), you need to continually check that your website is still mobile friendly based on the World-wide Web’s ever-evolving standards. Recently, Google has further bolstered the need for a mobile-friendly website, or a mobile website that is user-friendly.

In essence, mobile-friendliness is about being centered on the customer. Whether you choose to create a website that is responsive or provide a dedicated mobile site for those who use their mobile devices, the goal is to provide the customer with a pleasant, if not delightful, experience, one that will lead to more conversions. It aims to make things simpler for the customer.

So, the question is, do you have a mobile-friendly site? Here are some things to look into:

• Ask Google. Google has a testing site that tells you whether your website is mobile-friendly. Visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ and place your URL. The tool will analyze the website and provide you a report about the mobile-friendliness of your website. One primary indicator would be how responsive the site is – does it easily respond with a quick layout change to adjust to the user’s screen size. This makes it so the user does not need to “pinch and zoom” to read the contents.
• Simplified design. The key is to remember that you are dealing with smaller screen sizes, and ones that are controlled and manipulated by touch. The design should make it easy to tap (without accidentally touching another button), swipe and scroll. The layout must be simplified – since cramming the details and text in a small screen can be problematic. Give priority to key content – whatever secondary information they need can be given in the next pages. Action buttons such as “Buy now”, “Sign up” or “Call” should be readily seen.
• Ease of navigation. The buttons should be enlarged and clearly delineated so that the user can touch the desired button without difficulty. The steps or screens towards a certain action or transaction should be kept to a minimum.
• Again, the size of the screen is a consideration. Your selected font should be readable. Rather than choosing fancy stylized fonts, go for the simple and structured fonts that will not strain your readers’ eyes. The text itself should be short and catchy. When writing content, avoid wordy paragraphs and use bullet points instead.
• A mobile friendly site will readily scale for different-sized screens, as well as for different views (portrait or landscape).
• Loading speed. How quickly does your content load when your readers open your site? Each second of loading delay will cost you more and more lost leads. Ideally, the content found above the fold should load almost instantaneously (2 seconds is considered a maximum by some). Keep graphics light and optimized. Avoid using Flash-based content, as this will not load on some major mobile devices.

About Adaptivity Pro

Utah web design and mobile web design principles are ever evolving. It is best to turn to specialists who have their ear to the ground for the latest Utah SEO trends and who have experience about what works and what doesn’t. Adaptivity Pro offers you a crack team of experts – copywriters, SEO analysts, programmers and web designers. Our team is committed to help you grow your mobile-friendly presence.