How To Have A Mobile Friendly Website

In the past, a website only had to really be suitable for a computer or laptop because that is what most people used to access the internet.

14:31 16 August 2018

In they did have an internet enabled cellphone, the quality wasn’t that great, and they knew they had to struggle to use the web via that method. It meant that web developers and website owners didn’t have to think about being mobile friendly.

Times have changed, however, and now websites need to be mobile friendly for a number of reasons. One is that over half of all website hits come from mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones; if the website isn’t easily able to be seen or used through those devices, the person searching will look elsewhere. Another reason is that Google has begun to penalize websites that aren’t mobile-friendly, lowering their search engine ranking. Both of these problems mean fewer sales, and therefore having a mobile-friendly website is more important than ever. If you’re not sure how to go about it, here are some ideas to get you started.

You Don’t Need Two Websites

When you hear the phrase ‘mobile-friendly website’ you might automatically assume that you are going to need to build an entirely new website to go alongside your existing, laptop-friendly version. Thankfully, that is not the case in the modern era, even if it something that was practiced in the past. Having two websites is costly, time-consuming, and you will be penalized by Google for having duplicate content – something that is highly frowned upon even if the content was originally your own.

Instead of creating two websites with the same content that can be seen from different devices, it is best to have just one website that is designed to be seen on both mobile devices and standard computing equipment. This helps your rankings in two different ways.

Use A Designer

You may not have originally wanted to use a website designer, but if you want to ensure that your website is mobile friendly, then hiring one can be the best option. It is true that this will cost you more than going alone, but that is an initial cost, and one that could be covered with a loan from this lender. Once you have paid for the design, you will find that more people come to your website – it will look professional, and be totally responsive to their needs. You should, with keen pricing and a helpful business model, be able to recoup your costs and even pay back any loans early if you possibly can.

If you try to create your website yourself, you may well succeed and end up with an attractive, usable, mobile-friendly design. However, the time it will have taken you will have eaten into any time you have available to work on your business, and may be a false economy. In business, it is best to outsource wherever you can to ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible.

When you are hiring a web designer, ensure that they discuss responsive design work with you. It is this – the ability for your website to be seen properly and entirely on different screen sizes, at different resolutions, even with different layouts – that makes the difference.

Think About The Font Size

Whether you are outsourcing your web design or you are going to create your website yourself, you will need to consider the font sizes that you want to use. Don’t just assume that because a smartphone or tablet has a smaller screen than a laptop (in most cases) and a desktop computer that the font necessarily has to be smaller too. You really need at least 14px which might sound large, but will prevent people from having to zoom in and adjust their screens too much. Having to do this can put people off using your website, especially if they can go to a competitor’s site and not have to resize anything in order to read it. Although font size may seem like a small, even insignificant thing, it can make a big difference.

Button size is another issue that you will need to think about. Just as font size can turn a potential sale into a lost one, so too can the size of the buttons on your website. In a case like this, when you are deciding what size to use, most of the time it should be as big as possible. You don’t want the visitor to your website to touch the wrong button and become frustrated which increases their chances of going elsewhere.

Images

A website just isn’t complete until you have images on it – a lot of text and nothing interesting to look at won’t entice people to stay and read on, even if the text is informative and useful. When choosing images for your mobile-friendly website, they should be high resolution ones wherever possible. That doesn’t mean they have to be huge files that will take a long time to load (this should be avoided at all costs because it will slow down not only the website but the user experience as well), but they should be of good quality. No one is going to enjoy looking at low quality, pixelated images on their phones; it won’t help them make a purchasing decision, and it will make your website and company look unprofessional.

Use Videos

If there is one thing that a mobile device can do very well, it’s play videos, so it makes sense that you have some on your mobile-friendly website. The best way to do this is to use YouTube videos, rather than uploading videos directly to your site. Using YouTube means that you won’t have to worry about resizing anything to make sure it can be seen correctly, and because YouTube is automatically optimized for mobile devices when played on them, it will make your visitor’s experience a much better one. Another benefit to using YouTube is that you can also easily link your videos to other social media accounts, and create your own YouTube channel to gain more followers and fans.