The Ultimate Guide for Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Users
By Jacob Price
The average American spends about 5 hours per day on their phone. When you walk around with a supercomputer in the palm of your hand, it makes sense you’ll use it. In fact, over 64% of website traffic comes from mobile devices rather than laptops.
But when it comes to building websites, those stats are dramatically reversed. The majority of designing, building and coding a website happens on laptops and desktops. It’s easy to focus on making the website look good on larger screens and neglect the small screen that your potential customers are actually seeing.
So, what’s the answer? Mobile first design. If you haven’t thought much about how your site looks and works on a phone, don’t worry. We’ll walk you through everything you need to know so you can ensure your website performs on screens large and small.
Make Your Website Easy to View and Use on Any Device
The best way to make sure your website looks great on any size screen is by using responsive design. Responsive sites are fluid and move continuously to adjust to changing screen or window sizes. The key to designing for mobile is great usability. That means keeping text, buttons, and navigation clean and easy to use.
- Navigation: In mobile, your navigation is often contained in a clickable hamburger menu, while on desktop, it expands across the top of your page.
- Buttons: Buttons should be prominent and easily clickable. Ensure they are large enough (48 x 48 pixel minimum) and they prioritize important actions like calling or booking.
- Text: Font should be big enough to read without zooming. A good rule of thumb is to go no smaller than 16px for body font.
- Forms: Keep it simple and only ask for information you really need so users can quickly accomplish their tasks with minimal friction.
Ensure Your Load Speeds Are Fast
According to recent data from Google, 53% of users will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. That means you could be losing over half your potential audience if your website loads too slowly.
A fast website reads as efficient and professional to potential customers. If your site is loading too slowly, there’s good news: it’s fixable. There are some simple steps you can take to improve speed.
- Check the size of your photos and videos. Be judicious about which ones you use because they can create lag time during loading.
- Compress your images before you upload them. We like the tool Tinify for compressing images. Bonus—they offer a great free version.
- Audit your plugins and add-ons and remove ones you don’t use anymore.
- Take stock of your hosting provider as they can make a major impact on your load times. It’s important to pick a provider that’s fast and reliable.
In addition to the steps we outlined above, you can also take more technical steps.
- Your code could be slowing down your site. It’s called JavaScript bloat. To combat it, you can combine CSS and JavaScript files and remove unused scripts to improve speed.
- Reserve space on your page for elements like images and components so your layout doesn’t shift as it loads. This will improve your user experience and Google appreciates it too.
Optimize for SEO
When it comes to content, consistency is key. The primary content on your mobile site should be the same as your desktop site. Not only does this boost your credibility with users, it’s important to your Google ranking as well.
Google uses your mobile site (not your desktop version) for indexing and ranking. When Google indexes your site it finds, analyzes, and stores your web pages in a massive database. When your site is indexed, other users can find it when they search for information your website has.
If you omit vital information on your mobile site, you run the risk of your website falling lower and lower in Google’s search results. Because Google indexes your mobile site, poor optimization likely means lower rankings—even for desktop users.
So, like your design, it’s important to take a mobile-first approach to your content and SEO optimization as well. When you write your copy, think about how it will read on small screens. Chances are, it will work well on larger screens too!
Use Your Website Like a Customer
Once you’ve designed and optimized your website for mobile, it’s time to test it out. But here’s the important part. You have to think like your customer, not the owner of your business.
Grab your phone and navigate to your website. Bonus points if you can check out your site on multiple devices like tablets, iOS, and Android. Then ask yourself the following questions as you click through your mobile site:
- Can I read everything easily?
- Can I tap buttons without zooming?
- Is it easy to find the contact info and services?
- Does it load quickly?
If you can answer yes to all these questions, congratulations! If you ran into some issues, no problem. Now you know what to focus on and how to fix it.
LeadPoint Digital is Your Partner for Mobile First Design
At LeadPoint Digital, we’re experts in human behavior and technology. We love creativity as much as we love data and that combination results in websites that win. Our connected team of experts can deliver a site that’s both beautiful and functional—on any size screen.
If you want a fast, healthy mobile site that looks as good as it performs, we can help. Schedule your free consultation with one of our digital marketing experts today.
