How to Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

In this post, you will know what is a mobile-friendly website, the importance of a mobile-friendly website in today’s time, and how mobile friendly website contributes to your business success. And how you can grow your business, conversion, sales, and revenue by creating and optimizing your website for mobile users.

While this post is for everyone who wants to learn and wants to increase their website user experience and responsiveness. But mostly for those small business owners thinking or creating websites for businesses on their own or those who want to increase traffic, user experience, speed, engagement, and conversion.

So, let’s start to cherish this important information.

What is a mobile-friendly website?

A mobile-friendly website is any website that uses a mobile-friendly design and functionality. The goal behind the creation and use of mobile-friendly web design is to provide a high-quality experience for mobile users.

A mobile-friendly website design includes the website header, body, footer, layout, font size, image size, the responsiveness of pages sections or content boxes, overall visibility of content, loading speed, and ease of access.

For example, a website cannot be called mobile-friendly if on mobiles the text is too small to read or if users have to scroll the page to the right to read the full line of text or if buttons are too close together or very small in size.

Importance of Mobile-Friendly Website

Why is it necessary to create a mobile-friendly website? Or why you should optimize your website for mobile users?

Most people use the internet on mobile phones for their daily and business work. Many of these people would have been such who are not technical. They don’t know whether to zoom or scroll.

Second, the size of the mobile screen is less than the computer screen, due to which good visibility becomes necessary.

People use mobile phones more on buses, cars, etc. outdoors and because of this reason visibility of content, text font size, and contrast all these things are very important only then the mobile users will get a good user experience both indoors and outdoors. That is why it is very important that your website should be easy to use for mobile users.

Whatever images and text a website content should be optimized in the correct size. Also, the text and images, and website have to be pixel-perfect and in good contrast. So that people even with disabilities can use it.

Also, the buttons should trigger the first time when the user touches them. The touch interface of that website should have to be great. Most smartphones are today in touch screens. But the fingers of all mobiles are not the same, someone’s finger may be small and someone may be big.

That’s why the size of the navigation buttons should be large and interactive.

Apart from this, the layout, size, header, and footer structure of the website should automatically adjust according to the user’s device, that is, it should be responsive. It’s important because every user uses different types of phones.

Everyone’s screen size, and mobile, and browser settings are different. That is why they should not have any problem using your website, so it is very important for the website to be multiple-device responsive and accessible.

The mobile speed of the website should also need to be good, that is, it should open quickly in the mobile browser of the people. And when the website is loading or people are using it, no popup or extra message should come. There should not be any errors on the website. Only then it will load quickly.

And secondly, everyone’s internet connection and plan are different. Whose internet and mobile speed can be more or less. But you will reach the people only when the website is open. That’s why it is very important that your website should load fast on a mobile phone within 2 or a maximum of 5 seconds.

A Mobile friendly website provides a good user experience so that people do not have any problem running your website on mobile, shopping from mobile, or reading from mobile.

For example, if you click on the Services button, the contact page opens. what would you call this?

You are reading blog posts but headings are being read easily but paragraphs have to zoom in to read them. What would you call this?

Definitely is not a good user experience. Doing all these things will cost time, the internet, and the mind. Is this the kind of user experience you want?

No, you want to have easy access to what you want. And whether it is a website or app, whether you are technical or non-technical, you should not want to face any problems in using websites and the internet.

And this is what other people and your target audience and customers also want. So, wouldn’t you like to make your website mobile-friendly?

I am sure your answer will be yes.

Therefore, if you want to provide a good user experience, and want more traffic, and conversion then creates a mobile-friendly website or optimize your current website for mobile users. Read More: 10 essential steps to create a website for business successfully

Top 2 benefits of having a mobile-friendly website for your business

1. Increase your website rank and traffic:

Search engines like Google and Bing start noticing everything as soon as people click on your website link on the result page. Search engine bots track almost every activity of users from clicking on links to the exit page of the website.

In between search engine notices user behaviors, page speed, inside activity, scrolling, click events, and time to interact with each button or part of the website. And if a search engine found that most of the users’ behaviors on your website or on a particular page/post are not good or same or low then that page or post or website gets less traffic.

You can also understand it in such a way that when we’re driving in the city traffic lights and signals or google Maps point us to go in the direction where there is no jam or less traffic. So that we reach our destination on time and enjoy the journey without stopping. Similarly, the search engine also sends users to those websites which open quickly, where the user behaviors of past visited users were positive, where popups do not disturb, and users have spent a good amount of time.

And if your website is mobile-friendly, responsive, and optimized for user experience then you will get more traffic and conversion. This is very beneficial for your business in terms of traffic, domain authority, authenticity, and conversion.

2. Increase in conversion and sales:

A Website that is mobile-friendly or user-friendly, easy to use, easy to read, and quick to open then that it is considered a good user experience. A good user experience increases the trust of visitors in your brand, business, and website. It looks like you care about the people who visit your website. You’re serious to help people and consumers.

All of this is noticed by search engines, users, and market leaders. This trust and brand value encourage people to interact with more features, more posts, and other products on the website. And obviously, if the user experience is high on each step of the shopping car or sales or contact process then you will be able to increase the conversion, sales, inquiry, and revenue. And what is more important for business is if products and sales start growing along with positive brand positioning on the webspace.

Top 5 Ways to know whether your website is mobile-friendly or not:

1. Website Mobile-Friendly Testing Tools

The 1st step to know whether your website is responsive or mobile-friendly is to use the website screen testing, mobile responsive test, and mobile friendliness testing tools, these tools are as follows:

• Mobile Friendly Test – Google Search Console

In the image above you can see that I have tested the live blog post URL. And in the result, you can see that message is “Page is usable on Mobile” and crawled successfully. It means that this page is mobile-friendly. You can test the overall website as well.

• Website Responsive Testing Tool – Responsivetesttool:

The 2nd method is to test the website, landing pages or posts pages or content is responsive or not. Mainly this includes testing the website and its pages on various devices and in screen resolutions. With this or any other tool such as developer tools, you can check how your website pages, posts, text, and other parts look on user devices such as tablets, mobile, laptops, and desktop screen sizes. This will help you to create media queries for specific screen sizes for a stable and equal appearance.

2. Regularly Check the Google Search Console error and notification:

Google search console monitor and track the performance of the website listed or indexed with them. They do it because they show those websites in most cases that are mobile responsive, user friendly, and have a good user experience. Normally it means such websites get more traffic from search engines or organic that are mobile friendly and visitors find easy to navigate.

You can see that I got an email from Google Search Console in which the top issues highlighted are “text too small to read”, Clickable elements it means (lines, shapes, sections, buttons), and viewport not set. (This means the viewport code is missing in the theme header or in the header file of your website.)

3. Check the website speed on mobile – Tools: Google Page Speed Insights, GTMatrix, and Pingdom tools

Use any of these tools to test the pages/posts’ loading times on the user’s browser. It means checking how fast your website loads on mobile phones.

Website loading speed and core web vitals assessment are important factors or parts of a good mobile user experience of the website.

Speed needs to be in around 2 seconds or a maximum of 5) and core web vitals assessment needs to be passed.

Your website pages or posts get most of the traffic through, which has 1000+ words of text, and a variety of content such as videos, images, and many other things. Normally gets loaded slower than other pages. And if you’re using Google AdSense ads, then those pages will be slower.

Related post: Website design and development tools.

4. Check the user experience manually:

View your website from the visitor’s point of view. See if the content is being read. See that if you click on the button or navigation link, it opens easily. Does the website load smoothly? Can people with poor eyesight or people who do not use their fingers properly use your website?

Maybe if you have built the website yourself, you will feel that everything is fine. But tell your friend or neighbor or client or designer to visit my website and ask how were the experiences.

Understand those things and talk to your design developer about them. And if you can do it yourself, then work on these things.

5. See user behavior of visitors coming from mobile in Google Analytics data:

You see whether more traffic is coming from mobile or less. And what is the behavior of the people who are coming while using the website? It means comparing desktop and mobile traffic bounce rate, revenue, loading speed, average time spent, event action, scrolling, and everything that you can find.

If pages have a low average time or high bounce rate then check and take that page for sampling or for testing using the above tools.

Various other tools for evaluating Web Accessibility

How to create or make a mobile-friendly website?

The process of creating a mobile-friendly website or optimization of a website for mobile is similar. Below are some useful tips that you can follow:

1. Make sure this meta tag <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=5, viewport-fit=cover”> exists in your website header section or WordPress theme header.php file. I have seen this meta tag is missing in many free themes for the free version of the theme.

2. Use responsive WordPress themes. While most themes that are created these days are responsive. But always check the responsive or screen resolutions after customization such as logo change, header editing, navigation, and especially if you’re using page builders to create landing pages or home pages.

3. If you’re using custom CSS code to edit the page builder section or any section of the website then make sure you check that on all devices. And always add them to the media queries.

4. Use the below queries to make your website responsive: make your website responsive on most devices. Read More: Importance of responsive website design

• Mobile Devices (Smartphones)

@media only screen and (max-width: 600px) {}

• Tablets (Portrait)

@media only screen and (min-width: 600px) and (max-width: 900px) {}

• Tablets (Landscape) and Desktops (Small)

@media only screen and (min-width: 900px) and (max-width: 1200px) {}

• Desktops/Laptop (Large)

@media only screen and (min-width: 1200px) {}

You can also create specific media queries based on the device-specific breakpoints such as for Apple:

• iPhone 5, 5S, 5C, SE

@media only screen and (max-device-width: 320px) {}

• iPhone 6, 6S, 7, 8, SE (2nd generation)

@media only screen and (min-device-width: 375px) and (max-device-width: 667px) {}

• iPhone 6 Plus, 6S Plus, 7 Plus, 8 Plus

@media only screen and (min-device-width: 414px) and (max-device-width: 736px) {}

• iPad, iPad Mini, iPad Air

@media only screen and (min-device-width: 768px) and (max-device-width: 1024px) {}

• iPad Pro

@media only screen and (min-device-width: 1024px) {}

5. If you are using AdSense, then you can remove ads from those posts which have low loading speed.

6. For WordPress, you can disable third-party plugin features on mobile devices such as popular posts, sidebar, and social media content or any content that is loaded from a third party (another server).

7. To make WordPress Websites mobile-friendly you can also plugins to optimize your website such as caching plugins, WP Touch, etc. But make sure that all of these types of plugins do not put extra Burdon on the website loading.

8. If you’re using website builders to create a website then make sure the templates and page elements, alignments are mobile-friendly.

9. Use dark colors for text.

10. Make spacing at least 15 to 20 pixels between two elements.

11. Increase or set the font size for paragraph texts around at least 16 to 20. 20 for large screens and 16 to 18 for mobile.

12. Use CSS “filter: contrast(100%);” code in a specific section of the website where the visibility or opacity is less. By default, is 100%. And you can also reduce it to 90% less brightness. You can use it on images, text, logos, buttons, and almost anything to increase contrast.

13. Follow the W3C Accessibility Standards

14. Make changes periodically. But do not make too many changes to the website design, colors, layouts, pages, and links too often or even weekly. Else this will impact the user experience, SEO, conversion, revenue, AdSense CPC, and Google AdSense CTR and make your repeat visitors uncomfortable.

15. You can also use a Mobile website builder if you’re looking to only target a mobile audience to your website.

16. Do not use the sign-up popup on mobile.

17. If you’re designing a new website, then design the mobile version 1st and then the desktop.

Some other important points to manage and monitor the website

• When making any design changes such as themes, font, color, header, etc see if your mobile traffic is less or decreasing, or increasing.
• Do not ignore google search console errors.
• Try to block the fake or unknown bot traffic.
• Follow the Bing and google search console and search central guidelines when optimizing the website for mobile or overall.
• If you have technical limits, you can take the help of web developers, designers, optimizers, or consultants to audit or make your website mobile friendly or improve overall user experience. So that traffic and conversion grow.

Please share your ideas and tips in the comments to increase user experience. And problems as well? So that we can figure out and share the best tips with you related to any particular website problem.