Once in a while or several times, you have come across websites that look awful on your mobile phone. It’s not your phone that has a problem, don’t curse it. Many people who have websites haven’t done what they are required to do to make their sites mobile-friendly.
And for a long time now, actually, the search engine has favored people with smartphone-friendly websites.
This makes perfect sense, considering that a third of all web traffic came from mobile phones in 2015. And the percentage has multiplied each year. So what would I have done if I were you? I would have considered making a website that is smartphone friendly without making the desktop experience slow, either.
The following tips can help you to create a mobile-friendly website:
Think With Your Index Finger
Make sure anyone can easily navigate your site using one thumb and doesn’t require to pinch to use it.
This is the most crucial tip for any phone websites as you would want your readers to navigate with their’ phone hand’ only without the need of an extra hand. And if someone needs to pinch to zoom, then your info is obviously not optimized for that device, or it’s too small.
Almost all users visit your website using a touch screen smartphone, so make sure that the menu navigation and the buttons are big enough for any finger. Often, phone friendly sites will resize the screen using CSS and not considering that fingers may make misplaced clicks.
In the same way, when you’re making a mobile-friendly interface, make your targets big enough to be selected easily. The average of most adult’s index finger is 25 to 20 mm that translates to creating 45 to 57 pixels. You should give at least 45-pixel space for tap elements selection area or button. This will allow any screen targets to be easily selectable and avoid any accidentals taps of the user experience.
Make a Simple Design
A clear, designed, and targeted copy can do a lot for your website. Keep in mind that you have a few seconds to show who you’re as a brand. This is the truth for most websites, but it’s essential if you intend to design your site for smaller devices.
A lot of bells and whistles like copy, video, graphics can interfere with your website’s loading speed. If you’re thinking of using images (which is a good thing to help you rank higher), then try and use smaller images because it will help minimize the amount of time that your readers will spend waiting for your page to load.
Make It Short And Sweet
Some people often fall in love with their content that it makes their phone site congested. You should always try to write your story in a few words.
Go slow on the text. The mobile screen is smaller than that of a computer. So make sure that the amount of text on your phone website is cut-down to keep your readers interested in scrolling down. Only include an essential copy to catch the reader’s attention.
Keep In Mind That An Icon Is Worth a Dozen Words.
To avoid your site looking congested, make use of conventional phone icons instead of using a word for tap to contact, find menu, or connect to social media. The use of these icons helps your readers understand that the website is optimized for mobile.
Make It Fast
Use images that are mobile optimized. Feel free to cut down the bulky media files on your computer website. Such videos use media queries to remodel your computer website’s retina-ready images into lesser res versions. And try to replace heavy Jscript libraries such as JQuerry with standalone Jscript.
Also, remember that devices using the 3G network and below are still slow in download speed, and most users spend on bandwidth use. Considering all this, it’s important to resize down, crop, and optimize photos to fit the particular phone resolution and the aspect pf ratio. This will help you save a considerable amount of bandwidth, and surprisingly minimizing the mobile load speed and dramatically improving users’ browsing experience.
Make Sure That Users Find Your Contact Info And Location Easily
Remember the circumstances under which your website will be used on smaller devices. Most of the time, customers are searching for opening hours of your store, contact, nearest location of your business or even booking number. The faster the customer access this info and take action, the better the customers’ experience and your website.
Consider Geolocation
Utilize mobile features like geolocation. Your business can use this feature to give directions to where you’re located. Allow users to check in-store accessibility to the nearest store location. Offer online shoppers to pay in their local currency, offer targeted promotions, and connect your site to social communities such as Facebook, Yelp, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
Ensure That Forms Are Customized For Mobile
Minimize the number and the size of the form field, and leverage the built technology into a phone to optimize usage. For example, GPS is always available. So don’t bother your users with information such as their city, Zip, or state, instead prepopulate it.
Test to make sure that your content is accessible from any device
Don’t forget to test phone user experience to improve your website’s overall accessibility. You can use tools such as Solidfyapp, POP, delight, and UXRecorder to test your mobile.
Bottom Line
No matter how hard you try and make everything look perfect today, the way mobile devices work and look will continue to change. And your current mobile-friendly site may not work the same way tomorrow. Keep testing and improving where necessary. And, always keep your mobile customers as your priority and you will be okay with your business. However, if you’re too busy to keep updating your website, feel free to contact professionals who have expertise in building and managing websites.