Smartphones have become such a key component of modern life. Having them in our hands now almost feels like a natural appendage. As a result, mobile internet usage is continuously on the rise. In fact, over half of all website traffic worldwide is generated from such devices.
Given the apparent demand for mobile-friendly websites, it’s baffling why so many businesses neglect to ensure that their website is suitably optimized for mobile phones.
Thankfully, with the proper guidance, ensuring your site is mobile-friendly is easier than you might think.
Why Is It Important to Have a Mobile-Friendly Website?
The sheer volume of online mobile traffic is just one of several reasons why you need to make it easy to view your content on the go.
Whatever the size of your business, if you want customers to use or recommend your services, it needs to be accessible on mobile. Recent studies have shown that over 75% of people immediately turn to their phones to find an immediate answer to their needs. If your business isn’t suitably addressing them, you can bet your competitors are. Additionally, search engines such as Google value mobile-friendly sites within their SEO algorithms. Therefore, if your site isn’t up to scratch, it’s unlike to sit near the top of their listings.
Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly?
The majority of today’s website builders and designers appreciate the importance of an efficient mobile experience. Therefore, if it was professionally created recently, they should have taken that into account. However, such is the constant improvements and upgrades within mobile technology; even modern sites may be missing a trick or two.
Google themselves provides a quick, handy way to test
how your site fares, but in addition to their recommendations, it’s also worth getting a more detailed diagnosis from an experienced digital marketing agency.
Tips for Making Your Website Mobile-Friendly
So now you know why it’s crucial to make your site mobile-friendly; how can you go about achieving this? We’ve put together some helpful tips to implement.
1. Keep It Simple
It’s worth bearing in mind that phone and tablet screens are smaller than a laptop or desktop. Therefore, you want navigational points such as menus and display options to be as simplified and concise as possible to avoid the need for excessive scrolling or to have to zoom in and out.
The same goes for forms, CTAs and blocks of text, including the font. Customers will appreciate being able to find what they’re looking for quickly and conveniently; after all, that’s the main benefit of searching on the go.
2. Make It Fast
Modern-day smartphone users expect immediate gratification. Unresponsive pages, long loading times and fiddly, small option buttons are all directly linked to high bounce rates, whereby a customer will leave your page if it’s taking too long to do what they want.
Using AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) frameworks can massively speed up your load times. Google highly values AMP, and many CMS systems have AMP plugins to get you started.
3. Stop Pop-ups
People hate pop-ups. They can be a significant burden on user experience, especially on a mobile device. Forcing visitors to find little “x’s” to close can be enough to make them head over to a different site. This is especially true if they hold no relevance to your site.
Asking for email addresses and other valuable information can be beneficial if done appropriately. Pop-ups may be unavoidable on some content management systems, but if you can, stay clear.
4. Use Responsive Themes
For small businesses or sites with relatively low traffic, installing a responsive theme is a quick way to make your site more mobile-friendly. Some platforms, such as WordPress, allow you to select ‘responsive’ as an option when choosing your template.
Essentially, a responsive design means the content adjusts to fit the users’ screen size. This is helpful given the range of sizes in today’s smartphone and tablet designs.
5. Use a Digital Marketing Agency
Given the importance of making your site mobile-friendly, it’s worth making the most of an experienced agency to guarantee your site is up to scratch.
At Evolve Creative Solutions Agency, websites are our specialty. We produce contemporary designs and pay the necessary attention to ensure all our pages are mobile-friendly.
Unsure if your site is suitable for smart devices? We also provide a
free website audit service to analyze your existing site and pinpoint ways to make it mobile-friendly and more effective and successful overall.
