With more users shifting to the mobile platform to go about their daily activities while accessing the internet, website designers are now obligated to make their website pages mobile-friendly.
This has never been more imperative than now, since Google has announced that it will be changing the search algorithm for mobiles which will now rank mobile friendly sites higher on the list.
Desktop-friendly web pages are usually designed for larger screens with more accurate mouse clicking while mobile web pages need to be down-sized for smaller screens and a looser finger tapping.
Here are 7 ways to make your site mobile-friendly:
– Check your site for mobile friendliness. Google offers two easy-to-use tools facilitating you to test your website’s mobile compatibility – one is the Mobile Usability Report which can be located in your Google Webmaster Tools; and the second is a Mobile-Friendly Test that runs on a specific page URL.
These two tools help you understand just how mobile-friendly your site already is and where you need changes.
– Optimize your site for the mobile user, most tablets have around 10 inches diagonal dimensions, while smart phones have a mere 4 inches. A straightforward zoom-out only makes the text unreadable and finger-tapping difficult.
– The whole page layout may have to change, removing some sidebars and unnecessary pictures, replacing with smaller pictures, increase font size, and collapsing content into expandable widgets.
– Track and report keyword trends and mobile rankings across various device types such as desktop, mobile, and tablet in terms of both local and global results.
– Analyze where you stand in terms of web page rankings by comparing with competitive sites and apply your own custom techniques to increase your rankings.
– In case of mobile optimization, ensure you make use of available space with care and caution. Also ensure you take advantage of standard fonts and make use of 2 sets of CSS guidelines for your custom font.
So one that harnesses default font while the other that activates once the font gets completely downloaded. So your mobile visitors can go through the text while the whole page gets downloaded.
– Also you can try setting 100% image widths, this way they get instantly re-sized in case they happen to be too big for a mobile. So prefer adding this option to your site’s CSS style sheet.
Simply design your site for the mobile user, follow Google’s best practices in optimal key-word usage, and have a simple and straightforward web page layout.
Keep in mind that a well-designed mobile website will make it much easy for users to find what they need, thus naturally increasing user traffic for your target page.
4 comments
Optimizing a site for mobile view is very important because it increases one’s traffic.
The theme used for a site is very important because some themes are already optimized for mobile viewing
Mobile responsive websites will be getting better visibility on search engine result pages(SERPs) now. This will definitely help mobile users with their searches.
Google has provided a complete guide and a test to check whether your website is mobile friendly or not.
This is why I think everyone should design with a “mobile-first” approach. I know there are people that disagree, but I think designing with mobile in mind is every increasingly crucial today.
Ben
Awesome Post. I agree that optimizing a site with a mobile view is crucial and is a sure way to increase your traffic. People should always consider the mobile view as an option.