How to develop a remarkable Mobile-Friendly website?

Considering that over half of all Internet traffic comes from mobile devices, if your website is not fully optimised for mobile you will be missing out on huge potential traffic. Additionally, Google ranks websites according to their mobile-first index which means if your website is not mobile-friendly, it will not rank well. These are only two reasons why you need to optimise your website with a fresh responsive design that works across multiple devices. However, there are many more and developing a mobile-friendly website does not have to be a painful process!  

1. Set accelerated mobile pages (AMPs)

On top of normal website responsive design, you can set up certain pages of your website as accelerated mobile pages (AMPs). AMPs are simply stripped-down versions of the webpages that keep only the essential elements.

AMPs bring a couple of great benefits. The first benefit is visual – with less information and fewer graphics shown on the small screen, AMPs makes it easier for people’s eyes. The second benefit is that the minimalistic concept of AMPs makes them run faster and use far less data.

2. Optimise the page load speed

Page load speed is one of the most crucial components you need to get right. The attention span of people has been decreasing drastically over the years and nowadays most users expect pages to load within two seconds or less. Even on desktop you need to make sure your website meets those expectations, but on mobile its of even greater importance. Mobile searches are often made while people are out and about, hence, they want quicker answers than they would on a desktop search.

Here are 4 simply steps to improve your page load speed:

• Minify code
• Limit redirects
• Compress images
• Cache web pages

3. Adjust everything appropriately

When you are designing a website if you do it on a computer a mobile format will be included. However, when you are working on a desktop monitor it’s easy to forget how much smaller that content will appear on a mobile device. Therefore, to avoid such a mistake, you need to scale everything according to the different dimensions.

This starts with text. Everything that you want your users to read must be made large enough to be seen without having to squint at the screen or pinch-and-drag to zoom in. The same goes for all buttons. Every button you want your users to click should be big enough for them to easily tap. However, not everything needs to be bigger – images, for example, should be sized down so they will not take over the entire screen.

4. Ditch pop-ups

When it comes to pop-ups, you should consider avoiding them altogether if you can. On a computer screen it’s easy to display a pop-up without taking the entire screen and it’s also easy for users to click the “X” if they are not interested. However, that is not the case on a mobile device. Even if the “X” button is large enough to click, sometimes it is hard to find it on a small screen and users often inadvertently click the pop-up itself instead.

Overall mobile pop-ups tend to cause far more frustration for users than anything else. Apart from pop-ups that appear after the user specifically ask for by clicking on something, you should try to avoid using them on your website.

5. Use simple forms

Pop-ups are not the only thing giving mobile users a hard time. Online forms can also cause problems especially if not utilised properly. Unlike pop-ups, you cannot fully eliminate forms altogether because often they can help generate leads and help your users make purchases.

The solution is to create forms that are as simple as possible. Avoid forms that require huge amounts of information. Instead make them minimalistic with large buttons and text boxes so that the mobile users can easily navigate through them.

6. Get rid of large text blocks

Another frustration for mobile users are large text blocks. Huge text blocks should be avoided for web design on a computer, but they are particularly bad on mobile. Try to avoid filling hundreds of words on a small mobile screen all at once. Instead, aim to use straight forward text that delivers your point across clearly. If you absolutely must convey big amounts of information, try breaking it up as much as possible to make it easier for reading on a mobile device.

Here are some easy steps to help you break up large text blocks:

• Keep your paragraphs short
• Utilise the “white space” concept
• Include images and videos
• Use bulleted and numbered lists

7. Simplify your navigation bars

You can easily simplify things on your website by optimising your navigation bars and menus. On desktop screens you can stretch long lines of tabs on the top of it, however, it is a different story for mobile devices where the screen is often under three inches wide.

The easiest way to simplify your navigation is to utilise hamburger menus which the user can expand by clicking on them. Once the menu is expanded you need to make sure you do not list too many tabs (submenus) and give your user a handful of options while keeping it simple.

8. Do not forget to test frequently

The final step to ensure you are equipped with a mobile friendly website is to frequently test it. You test your website with Google’s mobile-friendly tool, which will rate your website’s mobile-friendliness and will make recommendations on how to improve it. You can also test individual elements of your web design if you need more detailed data of its performance. For example, you can test the loading speed of your website with Google’s PageSpeed Insights, which will rate the load speed of your website for both desktop and mobile.

 

Get help improving your website’s performance on mobile devices

If you are ready to experience a beautifully crafted mobile-friendly website – talk to us! At 10 Digital we have been developing user friendly websites for many years and we would love to help you develop yours. Isn’t it time your website was remarkable!