According to the statistics In recent years, mobile website traffic has surpassed PC traffic. In order for visitors to navigate and interact with websites more easily on smartphones, they need to fit perfectly on small screens.
When deciding on a website's ranking, search engines evaluate its compatibility with mobile devices. Google recommends optimizing pages for different types of devices. Mobile versions are now a priority: themobile-first indexing is based on the use of mobile-friendly content to generate search results.
In this article, you will discover how to make your website mobile-friendly to meet user expectations and search engine requirements. A mobile-optimized site will rank higher in the SERPs and generate more traffic and revenue.
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How do I know if my website is responsive?
A mobile-optimized website contains pages that are easy to view and read. The navigation on mobile should be fluid and provide the best user experience.
Mobile optimization is essential for any business looking to promote a website. It also improves behavioral factors and helps increase conversion rates.
Non-repsonsive pages may not be indexed by Google and will provide poor SEO results.
5 indicators of a mobile-friendly site
- High loading speed
- Width and margins adapted to the screen
- Excellent user experience
- The font size is adapted to the screen
With digitization, users' demands on a website's performance also increase. When content displays slowly, visitors often don't wait for it to load and leave the page. A mobile-optimized website reduces the number of factors that slow down speed.
Second, smartphone owners prefer to view pages from top to bottom. Using horizontal scrolling when the content does not fit the width of the screen makes it difficult to read the text and other actions performed on the site.
Finally, on a smartphone, all content is displayed in a smaller size. If a button is too small, you may not be able to click it immediately. A small distance between navigation elements and links leads the user to the wrong pages.
How to check the mobile compatibility of my site?
To make a website mobile-friendly, you must first evaluate its current optimization. This will allow you to identify weak points, check if the problems have been solved and make the necessary changes. There are several ways to test the mobile version of your website.
Optimization test
To take the Google optimization test, you will first need to have a Google account and have checked your site in the Google Search Console.
To start, enter a URL in the search bar. After processing the request with the mobile optimization test, the page will appear on the phone screen with its respective status. If no problems are detected, you will see the message "The page is mobile friendly". If not, you will see "Page not mobile friendly" and a list of errors to correct.
Make your website responsive in 8 simple steps
These tips will help you optimize your website for mobile devices and are relevant to improving existing web pages, adding content and creating a new resource.
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1. Adopt the responsive design
With responsive web design, the site pages adapt to different screen sizes. In addition, a mobile version displays menu sections and drop-down boxes in columns, which is useful when using a smartphone.
Responsive web design is a good alternative to creating a separate mobile version of your website. Most modern templates have a responsive design, where the structural elements of the page form the appearance of the site and adapt to the width and height of the browser window on the user's device.
2. Ensure readability of content on mobile devices
To have the content displayed in the width of a smartphone screen, add a graphical window meta tag to the page code that will scale it to the screen size. The device width parameter should not be set. Also, do not specify specific values in the CSS styles.
3. Keep it simple
When adapting the website for smartphones, try to evaluate it through the user's eyes. This will allow you to choose the best font and improve the design by adjusting the size of the page elements and their position in relation to each other.
The height and width of the buttons should be optimal so that when they are displayed on a small screen, the user has no problem clicking on them. There should be enough space around the navigation elements. This way, visitors will not be accidentally directed to pages by adjacent links.
4. Optimize CSS and JavaScript
CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and JavaScript elements form the look and feel of the website. CSS styles are responsible for the colors and fonts used on the page, and JS elements are responsible for the interactive blocks.
On WordPress, many plugins can help you to reduce your CSS and Javascript files without having to write a single line of code.
5. Optimize images
Images often have a negative effect on speed. The problem gets worse when there are too many of them on a page. Visual content can be optimized by reducing its size and volume. For clear display on desktops and mobile devices, thumbnail images are often sufficient.
There are plugins that allow bulk uploading and compression of files without loss of quality. These plugins can also convert your images to the new formats.
If your website has large images, they need to be optimized and updated. Before uploading a new image to the resource gallery, you should check its size.
6. Avoid pop-ups whenever possible
Pop-ups are banners or forms that appear on users' screens to attract their attention. The pop-up can be a welcome message, a promotional ad, a subscription offer or even cookies.
Pop ups are used to increase conversions. However, they are most effective when used on a PC, as it is more difficult to recognize the form text and close or delete it on a mobile version.
Another common disadvantage of dynamic windows is that they slow down the loading speed. When creating a mobile-optimized site, it's best to avoid pop-ups or keep their number to a minimum.
7. Optimize your core web vitals
Web Core vitals include LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), FID (First Input Delay) and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).
The LCP indicates how fast the browser displays the largest elements of the page on the screen. Ideally, it should not exceed 2.5 seconds. The FID is the response time of the browser when it clicks on an interactive element, button or link. A good value is up to 100 msec.
To eliminate Web Core Vitals issues, work on the layout and speed up the site loading by using the graphic window meta tag.
To ensure the effectiveness of changes, work with the Google Lighthouse.
8. Constantly monitor your website
As you make changes to your website, add pages and update content, issues can arise with speed, Web Core Vitals metrics and other mobile optimization attributes. You should retest your mobile version to fix them quickly.
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