If you want to give your website the best shot at a high search engine ranking, you need to make sure you use good SEO tools and that you generate high-quality backlinks to your website.
But you also need to do something else to avoid the dreaded Google penalty…
Google spends a lot of time researching what makes people happy when they’re trying to find information fast, and it turns out that what a lot of people want is a mobile friendly website.
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What does it mean to have a mobile friendly website?
A mobile web site is a website that’s easy to navigate on a mobile device.
Here are some features of good mobile website design:
- All the website’s software is compatible with mobiles
- The text is big enough that you can read it without zooming
- The buttons are big and easy to press (no accidental clicks)
- The page content automatically resizes itself, so you don’t have to do any weird horizontal scrolling trying to see the whole webpage
Why you need a mobile web site
- More web traffic: A mobile friendly website means your visitors can use your website more often during the day, because they don’t need to wait until they can get their hands on a laptop. This means that a mobile web site design is one of the easiest ways to increase web traffic.
- Better chance of turning new visitors into loyal visitors: Your first impression is everything. Some of your visitors will see your website for the very first time while using their mobiles. If they can’t read your text or navigate your website on their cell phones, they’re going to go to a website that has been optimized for mobile users.
- You avoid Google penalties: If your website hasn’t been optimized for mobile users, you’ll be penalized for it, and you’ll rank lower in search results. When you don’t have a mobile web site, you make it that much harder for new visitors to find you.
10 ways to boost your mobile website design
- Create a responsive mobile web site
- Make sure your font isn’t too big
- Make sure your buttons aren’t too small
- Simplify
- Optimize your images
- Make it easy on the eyes
- Use lovingly designed forms
- Make sure your visitors can navigate with one thumb
- Choose icons over text
- Keep content short and sweet
1. Create a responsive mobile web site
A responsive mobile web site means you can give all your users the same experience no matter which device they’re using to access your website.
This sounds complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Our website builder makes it easy to create a gorgeous, responsive website in minutes.
2. Make sure your font isn’t too big
Bigger font sizes were all the rage for a while, and it’s easy to see why. Large fonts look super stylish on a laptop.
Unfortunately, they’re a disaster on smaller screens.
Make sure that your font is just the right size so mobile users can read it comfortably.
3. Make sure your buttons aren’t too small
Small buttons aren’t really a problem on laptops, because cursors generally allow for more precision with locating and clicking. But all your mobile users have is their thumbs.
Their big, floppy thumbs that aren’t very good at pressing itty-bitty buttons. And heaven help them if your buttons are too small and too close together.
Do your mobile users a favor and make sure they couldn’t miss your buttons even if they tried!
4. Simplify
When you’re trying to get your visitors to buy your product or stay on your website, make sure your website isn’t so cluttered with images and videos that your visitors can’t tell what you need them to do.
Clutter means confusion, and confusion kills conversions.
A simple, clean website design is the best way to keep your mobile users happy.
5. Optimize your images
The more space your images take up, the more slowly your website will load. If you find that your website loads at a sluggish pace when you’re accessing it on a mobile, you might want to check your image size.
If you do that and still find that your website is painfully slow, follow the tips in our guide on how to increase page load speed.
6. Make it easy on the eyes
Cute, curly fonts don’t belong on most websites. Even though in theory, these fonts are more aesthetically pleasing, they’re also about ten times harder to read on a laptop and a hundred times harder to read on a tiny mobile screen.
Choose simple fonts that have clearly defined letters with lots of space between them.
7. Use lovingly designed forms
It’s much harder to type with precision when you’re using your mobile. So, don’t make your visitors have to write an essay using just their thumbs.
If you need information from your visitors, ask for the minimum amount of information that will enable you to contact them. Also, see if you can help your visitors by prepopulating some of the fields.
8. Make sure your visitors can navigate with one thumb
Your mobile users are probably going to be navigating your website using just their thumb. Make sure they don’t have to think too hard to do this.
Part of optimizing your website for mobile users means ensuring buttons are spaced far enough apart that there’s no room for mis-clicks and that users don’t have to pinch to zoom in on your website when they’re on their mobiles. (If they have to zoom, it means your images and fonts are too small.)
9. Choose icons over text
Where you can, present information using icons rather than text.
For instance, instead of writing out your entire phone number, add an icon that your users can press to be taken to your contact information.
The more icons you use, the less cluttered your website will appear, and the easier it will be for mobile users to navigate your website.
10. Keep content short and sweet
This is good advice in general, but it’s even more important when you’re optimizing your website for mobile users.
Keep your paragraphs short and easy to read so that busy mobile users will get the gist of what you’re saying without having to slow down their scrolling.
Wrapping up
A mobile friendly website is one of the best ways to improve your search engine ranking and get lots of eyes on your website, and the good news is that it’s not even that difficult to improve your mobile website design.
If you follow these ten tips, your mobile web site will be a delight to use, and you’ll have more web traffic than you know what to do with!
