How to Make a Website Mobile Friendly?

If you’re reading this, you’re certainly aware of the significance of building a mobile-friendly website and want to ensure that this one provides a fantastic experience to mobile users. We can show the best way to make a website mobile friendly, so let’s begin!

What Does Mobile-Friendly Actually Mean?

When we think about a “mobile-friendly” website, we mean one that presents a special and adapted “version” of your website to mobile visitors in order to deliver a more efficient experience.

There are various ways to make your website mobile friendly:

1. Responsive design means that your website’s design adapts to the screen size, whether you’re altering the size of your desktop tab or surfing from a smartphone or tablet.
2. Dynamic serving entails showing users a distinct, custom-built version of the website based on the device they’re using.
3. A mobile app—in certain contexts, having a fully distinct app for your mobile audience makes the most sense (albeit, if this is the case, you should also ensure your website is up to date for people who don’t want to download it).

To assist you in selecting the best setup, we’ll quickly outline all three, highlighting the benefits and drawbacks of each.

• Responsive web design is the most simple approach of developing a mobile friendly website for mobile SEO and is suggested by the majority of big search engines, such as Google.

In summary, all web pages get the same URL for both desktop and mobile users. The HTML remains unchanged as well. The only thing that differs is the CSS, which adjusts when your information is rendered based on the display size and device type.

With a responsive design, you can build a website mobile friendlythat will look fantastic on any device with the least amount of effort and time.

• Dynamic serving is another method to make a desktop website more mobile friendly.

With dynamic serving, the server replies to a certain URL with modified HTML and CSS based on whatever user agent requests the page.

This technique takes longer since you must generate two copies of a webpage for the same URL. You also need to keep up with the latest devices that are introduced. If you don’t, older mobile devices will load the desktop version of your website.

In general, dynamic serving is less desirable for mobile SEO.

• The mobile app method involved developing a distinct mobile-friendly site for mobile users.

Mobile traffic is diverted to a different, mobile-specific URL, which appears as follows - m.sample.com. In general, the mobile edition has less material than the desktop version and provides navigation that is more appropriate for mobile surfing.

This method was popular in the past, but it is no longer utilized and is not advised by Google.

If you pick this mobile arrangement, you’re likely to encounter major duplicate content issues, which might harm your site’s SEO. In addition, you should optimize titles and meta descriptions such that both versions of a certain page have the same title and meta description. Furthermore, HTML and CSS enable us to do previously unthinkable things with websites nowadays, hence, a responsive design is encouraged.

If you believe a mobile app might benefit your site, we suggest consulting a developer who can assist you.

Why is Making a Mobile-Friendly Website Important?

Every day, billions of people choose smartphones over desktop computers, whether they need to check up on the latest news, find out who won a football match, or order food online.

So, users love to use mobile phones to access the internet. It enables individuals to execute a variety of tasks, such as reading online articles or conducting financial transactions, at any time and from any location. As a result, if you make your desktop site mobile friendly, it will assist you in reaching this prospective market.

If the site is not mobile-friendly, Google may drop its ranking on the SERP, potentially resulting in considerable visitor loss.

If you build a mobile friendly website, your visitors get the best possible user experience no matter what device they use to view it.

How to Check If your Website is Already Mobile Friendly?

If you are wondering, “What is the best way to make my website mobile friendly?” one method for determining it is to review the supporting documents of the templates you’re using or simply load it from various mobile devices (if you have friends with different phones, you’re in luck). However, this does not imply that you are completely prepared for mobile consumers.

The design is important, but you also need to know how quickly your mobile site loads. There are a lot of internet tests that will tell you how well your site performs.

The quickest approach to determining whether your website is mobile-friendly is to run a Google Mobile-Friendly Test, which requires only the URL of your site. Google will put your site into a miniature phone mock-up and provide you with the outcomes.

You will be able to detect your site’s weak spots if you analyze the specifics. This might be the beginning of your optimization procedure.

How to Optimize your Site for Mobile?

Are you ready to take the leap into 2023 with a mobile-friendly website?

This part of the article will walk you through a few steps to create a mobile friendly website.

#1 Improve Website Performance

We propose Cloud or VPS hosting for improved performance. They provide the fastest server response time, which is critical for the performance of your website.

Another factor to consider when improving your site’s performance is the quantity of content pages that require the use of an extra plugin. This is especially true with regard to the homepage.

Here are some pointers to keep your homepage from slowing down your website:

1. Reduce the number of articles on your home page to 4–10.
2. Remove any widgets that are no longer in use.
3. Remove any plugins that are inactive or useless.

#2 Avoid Flash

Adobe Flash was a huge hit in the beginning days of the internet. However, this is no longer the right option. Flash was frequently used to develop animations, although it was typically not handled by mobile devices so we recommend to avoid it, especially if you want to make a desktop site mobile friendly.

If you have to include media on your website pages (photos, animations, etc.), utilize HTML5 to avoid harming your mobile SEO. It will not only assist you in delivering the same information across all platforms, but it will also considerably improve loading times on smartphones and tablets.

#3 Use Regular Fonts

Standard website menus do not work well on phones. You do not intend to display the normal menu since it will clog your mobile website. Alternatively, a mobile menu can conceal all of the options in a widget that will simply appear when the user taps on the menu icon.

Standard fonts such as Open Sans and Droid Sans are simple to read, even on tiny mobile phone displays. Custom and innovative fonts, on the contrary, can help your website feel more aesthetically appealing, but they are difficult to read when used for main body sections.

It may also encourage your users to install new fonts on their phones, which may degrade the customer experience and cause them to quit instantly.

Take into account font size too; the recommended text size for a mobile site’s primary content body is 16 pixels. Captions and labels, for example, can be 2 pixels smaller than the main text.

Even if you are confident that you make a mobile friendly website which feels and looks great, test its font readability on real devices.

#4 Image Optimization

When it comes to mobile sites, the objective is to generate the shortest size feasible without sacrificing picture quality. Because mobile devices have far less bandwidth than desktop computers, huge picture files will take longer to load.

Because many mobile users have restricted data plans, reducing picture sizes might help them use less data.

You may improve your pics in two ways: by utilizing visual editing software or plugins.

If you want to use visual editing tools to optimize your pics, you must do so before uploading them. Utilize Adobe Photoshop or web-based utilities like TinyPNG or ImageResizer.

#5 Provide Enough Space for Links

Because mobile sites have smaller displays, it’s critical to space your links sufficiently apart so that your visitors don’t unintentionally press on the wrong URL.

Furthermore, for a more seamless experience, aim to only connect to online pages that are likewise mobile-friendly.

#6 Optimize Button Location

When it gets closer to the call-to-action buttons, consider making them visible. In other words, to make websites mobile-friendly, the buttons must be big enough to be clicked with a thumb and placed strategically.

Because most mobile users utilize their phone with one arm, position your CTA in an easy-to-reach spot. Place your CTA button in the center of the screen, for example, because it is easier to reach than the edges.

Choose which button on your mobile internet page gets the highest priority if you have more than one. Make those buttons larger in size to capture your visitors’ attention right away.

#7 Include a Search Feature

No matter how good your site is or how appealing your menu seems on mobile devices, the reality remains that navigating on mobile devices is a little more complicated than on desktop platforms.

Instead of allowing visitors to roam over your site looking for a certain page, make it easier for them to locate what they’re looking for by incorporating a search tool. Depending on how essential this is to you, you may include a search form at the top or bottom of your page.

Even better alternative to create a mobile friendly site is to include a search tool in your mobile menu so that it is constantly accessible to your visitors.

#8 Limit the Number of Pop-ups

Pop-ups on desktop sites can enhance conversions and are easy to remove or close. But placing them on your mobile website may irritate visitors.

Mobile users may inadvertently click on a pop-up, which may redirect them to a different page. This negative user experience may cause them to abandon your website. It’s preferable to deactivate pop-ups altogether on your mobile website, but if you must use them to advertise your goal, use them intelligently.

Use other website features for marketing instead, such as a less invasive top banner accompanied by a moderate-size close button.

Remember that Google penalizes web pages that employ invasive pop-ups. It implies that if your site includes a full-page pop-up that covers the entire screen or displays as soon as somebody else views it, Google may determine that it is not web accessible.

It will cause your site to rank low in the SERPs, decreasing organic visitors.

#9 Utilize a Responsive Theme

Using a responsive theme to conduct mobile friendly website development is a straightforward and handy choice for website newbies or non-technical users. Applying this sort of theme will automatically adapt your website to every device.

If you’re just getting started with a website, utilizing a responsive template will make it mobile-friendly right away. Nevertheless, if you already have a desktop website, make sure to obtain a backup before switching themes.

Ascertain that the prior version of the site can be restored if any modifications cause a crash.

Mostly all CMS themes and site builder templates include responsive design, so you’ll have a lot of possibilities.

Examine theme ratings and sites that utilize your preferred theme on a mobile device. This allows you to create the user experience performance of the theme and choose the fastest theme.

Since speed is one of the most important variables in responsiveness, use Pingdom to see if the theme loads faster.

Conclusion

Achieving success online necessitates keeping up with the newest technological advancements and mobile design rules. Given that more than a quarter of internet users choose to visit websites via mobile devices, mobile optimization should be prioritized.

By implementing the aforementioned guidelines, we feel your website will have a higher chance of thriving and obtaining more organic traffic in the future.

Please let us know if you have any queries or need help developing the perfect mobile-friendly website; we are always delighted to assist you in web application development!