How To Mobile Optimise Your Website

Following on from our blog which discussed the reasons why mobile-optimisation is important (click here to read), the next step is to know how to implement mobile optimisation into your website. It should be a main goal of any website creator to follow mobile optimisation methods effectively.

Methods of Mobile-Optimisation

1. Compatibility for search engines
2. Incorporate responsivity
3. Consider website speed
4. Review visual design
5. Include contact information

1. Compatibility for search engines

In order to enable good SEO for your website, it can be very helpful to provide as much information as you can about your site to Google. Creating content for Google to sift through helps search engines know where to rank your site. The more information Google has to work with, the more likely it is for your site to be a top search result for a range of entries.

2. Incorporate responsivity

With responsive functionality, switching from desktop to mobile will allow your content to instantly fit to the scale of the viewing window, eliminating the need for zooming in or endless scrolling on mobile devices. In order to better present your content without detracting from the user experience, you may wish to simplify menus and rearrange on-page modules.

3. Consider website speed

Loading times on mobile devices are increasingly crucial as they influence a user's decision to remain on your website or leave. This also impacts your site's SEO, as Google is less likely to prioritise sites that will produce a negative user experience. For more, take a look at our blog here to see ways in which you can improve user experience.

4. Review visual design

Readable text

• Make sure all text is in a suitable font size to be readable and legible. Keep in mind that whatever font size you decide will be readable on a desktop, may not look the same on a small mobile screen.
• Choose simple sans serif fonts that are easy to read, and keep the number of types of fonts to a minimum.
• Remember to use paragraph breaking or whitespace usage in lengths of text to stop the page becoming overwhelming for the user.

Touch navigation

• Remind yourself of the difference between using a mouse or touchpad to navigate a website versus using your finger on a small screen.
• Having buttons and clickable elements clustered on top of one another can cause users to accidentally click on the wrong thing, causing frustration.
• Make use of whitespace to separate clickable features to prevent this.

Pop ups

• Steer clear from using large, flashy pop ups that obscur the user's view of the content they are trying to read.
• Note that Google will not prioritise websites that include flashy pop ups, therefore using them drastically drag down your SEO.
• Pop ups in inconvenient places can also mean users accidentally click on them when trying to scroll through content, interrupting a positive and engaging experience.

5. Include contact information

One click solutions are key when it comes to mobile-optimising. Something limiting about working off of a desktop version of a website can be that any important information users stumble across either have to be remembered or written down with pen and paper. Contact details are a good example of this, and these are often things users will visit a site for in order to find. One way of making your website mobile-optimised can be attaching your contact details to a click-to-call feature. For example, clicking on provided phone numbers will present users with the option to directly phone that number. The same can be reproduced for email addresses: clicking on a hyperlinked email will take users to their mail app and automatically load the address into the search bar.

Conclusion

While it's understandable to want to provide as much useful information as possible about your product or service online, it's important to keep in mind the device your audience will be using and how it will impact their experience. When you optimise for mobiles, you improve your business overall. By following these steps outlined above, mobile optimisation is now well within your reach for your own website.

Call to action: for any further queries, get in contact with the team here.