This probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard or seen a company tell you that your website needs to be mobile-friendly, but precisely what is a mobile-friendly website?
A mobile-friendly website works well regardless of if it’s opened on a desktop or a mobile device. This takes into consideration how easy the site navigation is if it loads quickly and much more.
While most websites are designed and created on a desktop, more than half of all users come from mobile devices. Whether a smartphone or a tablet, it’s become a necessary factor in creating a website to ensure it’s usable across all divides - not just on a desktop.
If you’re unsure of how to make a website mobile-friendly, how to fix it, or how even to build one, keep reading! We even have a checklist at the bottom of this blog for you to take to ensure your website is as mobile-friendly as possible.
Does Google Increase Ranking for Mobile Friendliness?
In April of 2015, Google announced that it would be using the mobile-friendliness of a website as a ranking factor. This change forced 85% of the websites at the time to really take a good look at exactly how friendly their websites were.
And starting in July of 2019, Google started to index websites first by mobile, then by desktop.
So while Google might not rank your website higher just because it’s mobile-friendly, it’s one of the most important factors when considering rank order on the SERPs.
Is My Website Mobile-Friendly?
In the last few years, Google has penalized many sites that offer bad experiences to mobile users. It was later confirmed that Google’s mobile-friendly test is a part of the overall ranking criteria.
If you want to see how mobile-friendly your website is or what you need to do to fix it, then their own test is your best bet.
After all, Google’s entire business and foundation is built on a simple principle: give the user information as fast as possible that’s as accurate as possible.
How to Make Existing Website Mobile-Friendly
If you already have a website up and running and need to make it more mobile-friendly, then we got your back! While all of the tips in this blog can be used on an already existing website or when you’re building one from the ground up, these are specifically focused on updating your pages to be more mobile-inclusive.
Improve Your Website’s Mobile Responsiveness
Research has shown that if a delay is more significant than one second, it could cause users to bounce off your website and onto competitors instead.
To prevent this, creating a website with better mobile responsiveness is vital.
One of the biggest problems with slow-loading web pages in regards to responsive websites is images. While it’s best to have large download sizes to ensure your images aren’t pixelated, uploading an image too large can slow down your responsiveness.
As long as your images are within these overall dimensions, then your website should be responsive.
Two other big items that slow down your website’s responsiveness are fonts and colors. We’ll go more into this further down, but for now, make sure you’re using a max of two fonts and no more than four or five colors.
Make the Information People Look for Easier to Find
I know what you’re probably thinking…
But if a user finds the information they’re looking for too quickly, won’t that affect my bounce rate? In turn, affecting my ranking?
Bounce rate is the percentage of people who click on your website and then go back to the SERPs (search engine results page) without clicking on another site.
Therefore, if your user can go to your website, find the page they are looking for, and then exit, this does not affect your bounce rate at all.
Even so, people often pull out their smartphones looking for something specific—the answer to a question, the address of a nearby restaurant, or a customer service phone number. They want to find the information they need as fast and as efficiently as possible in these cases.
If you’re unsure how to adapt your website for this, Google Analytics allows you to add ‘Mobile Traffic’ as a Segment in the Behavior section. This will enable you to see how mobile visitors interact with your website, where they visit, and what they search for (if you have a search feature).
Generally speaking, a well-thought-out FAQ page is the way to go.
Get Rid of Your Mobile Pop-Ups
Fun fact, the inventor of the pop-up ads actually issued a public apology on behalf of his invention.
Google sees how aggravating pop-ups can be to the overall user experience, so they decided to penalize websites that do any of the following:
Show a pop-up with the content of the main site, just after the consumer reaches the page from search results.
Have a pop-up appear as visitors are exploring the main site.
Display a standalone pop-up that does not allow the consumer to access the site content without dismissing the pop-up.
Leverage a template or website layout that shows the top third of the page as content but turns out to be a standalone pop-up.
If your website has any of these, we suggest disabling them as soon as possible and creating banner ads instead.
Turn Your CTAs Into Buttons
Have you ever tried to click a link on your mobile device? Sometimes you end up accidentally highlighting it instead. Or maybe you miss it entirely, and nothing happens.
When users get frustrated on a mobile site and leave, this decreases your conversion rate, increases bounce rate, and negatively impacts your ranking.
To have the best chance at your audience clicking your CTAs (call-to-action) and following through, we recommend turning your CTA links into buttons instead.
Improve Your Website Readability
No user wants to strain their eyes just to read what’s on your page. That’s actually why all of our blog content is in large, easy-to-read fonts, and includes various different types of illustrations and animations.
Submit a Sitemap if You've Made Major Changes
If Google isn’t able to (or doesn’t know when to) crawl and index your website, then all the notable changes you’ve made would be for nothing!
Once you are finished updating your website, head on over to this website to create and submit a sitemap to Google so they can be notified of all the changes you’ve been making.
How to Create a Mobile-Friendly Website From the Beginning?
All of the points we’ve discussed earlier in this blog will still come in handy, but here are a few ways to create a mobile-friendly website to keep in mind when just starting.
Only Use One or Two Fonts and Limited Colors
Using different fonts and colors will slow down your website’s loading time. To decrease the amount of information that is needed to load your website correctly, we recommend sticking to just one or two fonts and no more than four colors.
While it is possible to use multiple fonts and colors in a quick-loading website, it is better to leave that sort of job to the pros who are trained to ensure you have a good enough back-end to handle all that information.
Optimize Your Images for Quick-Loading
Large images slow down your website speed which creates a less than optimal user experience. When your audience has to wait too long for your website to load, they might end up leaving instead!
The two things that play a huge role in image optimization are:
Image file format (JPEG vs. PNG vs. GIF)
Image Dimensions (height and width)
To keep things simple, you want to use JPEGs for photos or images with lots of colors, PNGs for simplistic images or when you need transparent images, and GIFs for animated images only.
When it comes to image size, you’ll want to optimize the dimensions to be as small as possible but still with high resolutions. When an image has a low resolution, it may look blurry or pixelated when zoomed in.
To create a high resolution, low dimension image, you’ll want to resize the image you’re using into the correct size that your website is asking for. This can usually be done on the website image editing software it already has available to you.
If you need an additional resource to help you with this, https://tinypng.com/ is an excellent tool you can use to adjust the size and quality of your images.
Don’t Use Too Many Plug-ins
While it may be tempting to use as many plug-ins as possible to optimize your site for SEO, contact forms, insights, and more...some plug-ins can be pretty unnecessary.
Most website builders already have tools to help you with what a plug-in can do, you just have to learn how to find them. Since SEO is a crucial part of website making now, every basic website builder comes with the SEO tools and resources you need, with no extra plug-in needed.
The same goes for email marketing, contact forms, or landing pages. WiX, WordPress, and Squarespace all have those capabilities built into their services.
If you do need an extra plug-in for something, that’s fine! Just make sure you’re not adding so many that it slows down your website’s loading times, creating an unfriendly environment for mobile devices.
Sign up for a Content Delivery Network
One of the best ways to improve your website’s mobile friendliness is to sign up for a Content Delivery Network. Site speed is an essential factor in boosting usability, improving bounce rates, increasing conversions, and ranking higher on search engines. However, above all else, your website’s speed is highly dependent on the quality and location of your web host.
A content delivery network (CDN) refers to a geographically located group of servers that work together to provide fast delivery of website content.
While the best CDNs aren’t free, you can increase your website speed tremendously for just $10-50 a month; worth it, in our opinion!
Create a “Thumb-Friendly” Design
In a previous blog post dedicated to 2022 Web Design Trends, we discussed the importance of creating a “thumb-friendly” website.
Most users hold their smartphones the same way - fingers wrapped around the back of your phone (or around a phone grip), leaving your thumb to do all the work. Creating menus, buttons, links, etc., all within thumb’s reach, is essential in creating a mobile-friendly website design.
As you can see from the image above, keeping your designs and clickable objects in the middle of your screen is the safest bet. If a site is hard to use on mobile, audiences can quickly leave and find another option.
Submit a Sitemap for Google to Crawl
We mentioned this above, but it’s crucial when your website is brand new. Google has 252,000 new websites created every day worldwide, so finding and crawling your website might take some time if you don’t communicate with Google about it first.
This link will tell you everything you need to know about creating and submitting a sitemap to Google.
Mobile-Friendly Website Design Checklist
Congrats! Your Website is Now Mobile-Friendly
Learning how to make an existing website mobile-friendly isn’t rocket science, and it only takes a few hours! We broke down all the necessary steps you need to take to make your website mobile-friendly and fast in less time than you think because we know what it takes to create the perfect website.
If this blog was a little confusing, or you just don’t have the time, then that’s what Zoek is here for! We offer professional web design services to increase your customer experience, improve your website’s mobile friendliness, and boost your sales.
Click the button below to schedule a free chat with one of our experts to see what we can do for you.
Kellyann Doyle is a Content Marketing Writer at Zoek, an SEO, Web Design, and Digital Marketing Agency that assists small and medium-sized businesses with their online footprint. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in 2013 from the University of Houston with a Major in Communications and a Minor in Marketing and has been working in the Digital Marketing world ever since. When not working, you can find Kellyann trying new recipes, enjoying a good nap, or watching Friends for the 500th time.