Making your website a mobile friendly one helps the company get more views and reach, avoiding the trouble of the customer to stick in one place just to read. Mobile phone access has seen a drastic change, from being an exciting new technology, it has now slid into our daily nitty-gritty. In the year 2016, the results of the usage of mobile surpassed the usage of computers and have been increasing to date with over half of the traffic on smartphones worldwide. This is why it is crucial for all the providers and businessmen/women to get their websites mobile friendly. However, failing to do so can cause the traffic to divert directly affecting your search engine rankings.
Why is it so important?
- Almost more than half of the traffic worldwide uses a smartphone with a decrease in desktop usage
- Google now prioritizes mobile friendly websites for their search engine algorithm, which also means high-quality websites will not be considered in the ranking
- Increases your SEO score and grabs a steady audience
Is your website mobile friendly?
Here are two simple checks you can make to know if your website is mobile friendly:
- Is your website built recently? If yes, there is a possibility of your website being mobile friendly, as designers keep the mobile experience at the top of their minds.
- Google has a mobile friendly testing tool. All you need to do is add the URL of your website in the search box and you’ll receive a screenshot of the visuals on how the website would view on a smartphone screen.
If your website is not mobile friendly, don’t worry! We have accumulated 10 ways for you to tighten up the code making sure of the functioning.
10 ways to make your website mobile friendly:
1. Use Media Queries:
The media query is an important keep tool with reference to the users as media. These queries are a popular technique, delivering a style sheet that makes the website portable on all devices, allowing the customers to choose the device size and then are directed to the browser following the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) set. One must make sure of the system being configured across all devices and not just the most popular ones. Cross-checking through a list or having an ongoing subscription help with collecting information
2. Use Frameworks :
Front-end frameworks like Bootstrap are designed to automatically scale a web page in a device by using a pre-built system. It is a simpler process compared to coding the combinations individually, however, you’ll have to check for the framework’s full compatibility providing full support to the existing goals and site.
3. Avoid disabling the submit option:
Have you tried hitting the submit button resulting in a drop in the connection and getting disabled? Yes, that! It could create quite a hassle and get frustrating for the customers to view a disables ‘submit’ button and even for you to have repeat submissions. Therefore, it is an admirable goal to avoid disabling the submit option.
4. Use a responsive theme on the content management system (CMS):
These themes help ensure the high-quality display and easier functioning of the website for the users that can be overlooked at times. So make sure to use these themes making the website user-mobile friendly, publishing, and managing the content in an intuitive fashion.
5. Use Percentages:
Gone are the days where pictures were scaled upon pixels that would mean having various sizes over the web putting out a rather unprofessional tone. This is why it is important to keep a certain configure for all images to a specific width, generally 100%, resulting in a good viewing experience for the customers.
6. Use on simple designs:
Using a simple design differentiates the display from the desktop making it more practical, and provides instant delivery of the content as expected by the customers. Having decorum throughout the website also doesn’t divert the attention of the views enhancing the valuable investment and absorbent nature.
7. Avoid Block JavaScript, CSS, or Image Files:
The simple reason is, the more specialized things are, the less compatible they are, to be used across the devices. However, the key is to make your website universally compatible with any device, and using such software could divert from it.
8. Optimize Image Size:
As the bandwidth of the mobile devices tend to be smaller than the desktop, keeping the image size smaller than the file size makes the website look crispier and clean for the good quality experience of the customers. Also, shrinking the size uses less data, helps the page to load faster, and contributes a professional view of the site.
9. Avoid the use of flash:
Flash is avoided by mobile devices as they disrupt the display of the website. Even if your website relies on the flash, it is recommended to find another technology like HTML.
10. Use Standard Fonts:
Using customized and creative fonts may help a website to look nice, but it could get frustrating for the customers to download new fonts to their phone resulting in them leaving the website and navigating to different websites. However, we are fortunate enough to have the mobiles pre-install various fonts helping us use when designing your site.
Pro Tip – Remember to use fonts that are easy to read in different sizes.
To Conclude:
The desktop is a horizontal screen, whereas, the mobile phones are tall and narrow that makes the content more important. Create a drop-down menu, add pictures, or play a video but always remember the direction and how the customers will view the content. Keeping up with technology helps with more reach and opens, increasing the investment made through the mobile friendly website.