When you create a site you have to think about making it responsive on all devices. With the advent of smartphones, it will be essential to make your site mobile friendly to provide a great experience for users who visit or make a purchase on your site.
How to understand if the site is mobile friendly?
Simply enter the URL in the search box and the tool will tell you if your site is optimized for mobile search, also showing you a screenshot of how the page looks on your smartphone and a series of tips to improve the mobile user experience. .
7 steps to make the site mobile-friendly
- Make your site responsive
Web designers agree that, in order to function properly on desktop and mobile platforms, the website must be responsive, i.e. include the same content and information, adapting and optimizing the layout according to the device used.
- Make it easy for users to find information
Often users are looking for well-defined information and want to find it as soon as possible. Think about what information visitors might be looking for the most and place it where it can be seen, such as contact information, social media links or the “ Login ” command if present.
- Avoid ads and pop-ups that block text
Pop-ups don’t like them, especially when they arrive on mobile and prevent you from reading the text. Most visitors won’t waste time looking for the “x” in order to close the pop-up and will go straight out of your site – the perfect example of a bad user experience.
- The site must be fast
Users are impatient and want the site to load fast. A Google Search on mobile loading speed found that if a site takes more than 5 seconds to fully load, users will leave the page. Among the tips to speed up the site:
- Make sure your hosting is performing and reliable
- Use a CDN
- Keep PHP up to date
- Optimize your content
- Remove unnecessary themes and plugins
- Minify the CSS code
- Simplify the layout of your site
Websites must be easy to navigate, even more so on mobile. Study your site design, pages, category organization and menu thoroughly. From mobile, the hamburger menu seems to work well, it takes up little space and opens only if visitors click.
- Make the buttons visible and clickable
The small buttons make it difficult to click from mobile, often due to the proximity between them. The advice is to use large and well spaced buttons, evaluating the correct positioning. UX expert Josh Clark argues that only a third of the phone’s screen is perfect for our thumb: at the bottom, on the side opposite the thumb itself. This will make clicking easier.
- Test your mobile experience regularly
To deliver a great user experience you need to be ready to test it yourself with your mobile device. Browse your site, the menu, observe the loading times and, in general, check that everything is optimized correctly.