Building a Mobile-Friendly Website

A mobile-friendly website is a solution for a much wider audience. Several factors need consideration to build a mobile-friendly website. In this blog, we will shed light on these factors and elaborate on what goes in creating a mobile-friendly website. 

Keeping the content simple, readable and informative in the first place is very important. To make information more accessible, we should provide the readers summaries and anchor links. We need to reduce the mobile website's loading time with resized and compressed images, as well as setting the viewport Meta tags. We have to make the user experience excellent by simplifying forms and avoiding distractions such as popups.

We have to limit the number of links in the menu or use the popular hamburger navigation to make the visitors move easily on the website. To improve navigation on mobile devices, we have to make sure we are using proper touch targets. We have to get into the shoes of our users, thinking of goals they want to achieve on our website and how we want to make the whole thing easier for them.

There is a frequent "knowing vs. doing" gap when it comes to mobile optimization. This is why the experts have given some clues of what to do to make the website responsive to various mobile devices. The section below further elaborates on the same. 

Focus areas for building a Mobile Friendly Website

 

Simplify navigation

A screen of a smart phone is significantly smaller than that of a PC or laptop - barely 3.5" to 6" as compared to standard 10" to 15". We have to put the most necessary stuff there and cut the fat out. This also applies to the site's navigation bar. Keeping the navigation consistent throughout the entire page to avoid confusion among our visitors and letting them move easily to their desired destination should be the goal. We ought to limit the site's navigation. The optimum number of links in the menu should be at least 3 and not more than 7. People use mobile devices like to find things fast, so we have to consider search field as a part of it. 

One level of navigation, situated horizontally is usually the best solution for a mobile website, according to the leading mobile web developers.

 

Optimizing the images

According to Google, images take even up to 60% bytes needed to load a page. Mobile users don't like waiting for the site to load. The bigger the image size, the longer it will take to load the page on a mobile device. It will have a negative impact on the user experience and Google search rankings of the webpage. Relative sizes are yet another solution for images. To save our visitors the long loading time irritation, resizing and compressing images for our mobile website is the optimal solution. Depending on the type of an image and its role on the mobile website, we have to use proper image formats.

.png files (uncompressed format) - For logos and transparent pictures. 

 .jpg format (compressed) – For the rest of the images as we can balance the quality and size of a picture.

 

Eliminating Pop-ups

There is hardly anything more irritating than clicking on a link and being detracted by a popup. Popups lower the overall user experience and make access to desired content more difficult. Do you know that in 2017 Google established a penalty for the sites where content is not easily accessible to a user because of 'intrusive interstitials' (or, generally, popups), by decreasing their search rankings?  If we want our website to be mobile friendly we should totally avoid popups.

 

Simplifying the forms

Filling forms on a 4" touch screen is very exhausting and bugging. To spare our visitors from this inconvenience we can:

• Break the forms into several steps- This is also for the better UX. Dividing the typing process into several stages makes the clients feel like they're getting closer to their goal and saves them frustration. Even if they abandon the process halfway through, we can at least end up with their e-mail and reach them through later on.

 

• Reduce the number of form fields- We need to think if we really need all the data we ask for to achieve our business goal and then make necessary cuts. 

 A Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design (RWD) allows us to build a single website layout that changes dynamically depending on the type of device the audience are viewing it. We can also use templates and landing page editors that automatically create a mobile-responsive version of the website. There's no need to build several separate websites for different kinds of screens which has several advantages. 

Streamlining the content

Let us first know regarding the ‘Tailoring' and 'Rearranging' terms when referred to content.

• We should eliminate the unnecessary content.
• We have to provide the most important stuff at the beginning.
• We have to keep it simple.
• Get straight to the point.

Readability also means that no part of our mobile website will require people to zoom. We should also take notice of the contrast between the background and the copy of our page. For the fully pleasant mobile experience, Google recommends the contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for all text except for a very large one.

Here’s the idea on the various ratios:

Research suggests there will be more than 3.8 billion mobile device users worldwide by 2021. Also, 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile-friendly site. Both figures show that a growing number of people are using mobile devices to find the content and research products/services, which points to the growing need for mobile-friendly and mobile-first websites.

EIS’s team of web developers includes qualified UX designers, visual designers and software engineers with deep expertise in mobile web development technologies too. Mobile web development, responsive design, adaptive design and other techniques are all capabilities found in EIS’s delivery team. Making websites work seamlessly on mobile devices is what we do! Please visit www.eisdigital.ae for further information.

Question and Answer section

1) What does Mobile Friendly Mean? 

A mobile friendly website is essentially when your regular website shrinks down to be small enough to display on a mobile device. It looks like a tiny version of your website. There's a lot of zooming, pinching and scrolling going on, but the site displays and functions.

 

2) How do I know if my website is mobile friendly?

Google offers a website where you can test your website to see if Google says it is mobile friendly. Simply paste the URL of your website into the space as shown below, and then click “Analyze.” Within a few seconds Google will tell you if your website is mobile friendly.

 

3) What is the difference between mobile and desktop friendly websites?

Mobile-dedicated sites are designed for mobile phones. Responsive-design sites are sites designed for a multitude of devices with different screen sizes; they automatically adjust the layout of their content to the available screen size. Full (or desktop) sites are designed for the desktop and are not mobile optimized.

 

4) Why mobile friendly websites are important?

One of the best things about having a mobile-friendly website is that you can reach a wider audience. Responsive websites make online sharing simple and so your web visitors are more likely to share on their social platforms. Having a responsive website is a free way to rank better on search engines.

 

5) What is mobile Optimization?

Mobile optimization is the process of adjusting your website content to ensure that visitors that access the site from mobile devices have an experience customized to their device. Optimized content understands the mobile user. It easily adjusts to fit on smaller screens.