4 tips to make your website mobile friendly
In the modern business age, having a well designed and responsive website is key. This will enable you to attract potential new customers and also increase your brand awareness. A massive part of your website’s effectiveness now though is making sure it is fully optimised for mobile use. If you do not pay the proper attention to this vital area, you risk being left behind by competitors and leaving your customers unimpressed.
What exactly is optimising your website for mobile use?
Within the last few years, the ever increasing way people use their smartphones or tablets for everything has changed the social landscape.
This is also true for business.
Consumers will do much more on their mobile devices now, even if they are sitting in their own homes! Many more people now will use their smartphones or tablets to search for answers online and look for an organisation’s website. This is the exact reason having a mobile friendly website is essential.
When a website is built, it does not automatically work well on a mobile device. This aspect needs to be incorporated into your website design from the start to ensure this mobile optimisation is built in as a core component. By doing this, it means your website will function well and be fantastic to use when people pull it up on their mobile devices. It will give the same superb user experience and function as it would from using a PC to check it out.
How can I improve my website’s mobile optimisation?
If you are starting to design a website or have already got one that isn’t set up for mobile use, here are a few stellar tips to help out:
1. Think about it from the start
We have already touched on this tip but it is worth going into it in more detail. Of course, if you already have a site that isn’t mobile friendly then skip to tip 2!
It really is worth making mobile optimisation a key part of the design process for your site from the off though. It is much simpler to design a website that works on mobile devices rather than having to update one that is already built. If you are using WordPress, then choose a theme that is set up to work well on smartphones or tablets. If you are using a web design company, then make sure they are fully experienced in this area.
2. Design it to function well with touchscreens
Most (if not all!) smartphones or tablets now will use a touchscreen to operate them. Of course, this is different to many PCs where a mouse will be used. Although it may not seem a big difference, it actually is. Make sure to adjust the settings when building your site so it functions equally well, whatever method people use.
3. Size matters
When it comes to engaging with a website on a mobile phone or tablet screen, size matters! We’re talking about font size here for any text that appears on the page. Nothing is more annoying for your customers than the text being very small and having to zoom in all the time. Use a bigger font size for the best mobile optimisation results. Naturally, we’re not saying go massive but just think about making it as readable as possible.
4. Compress your Hi-Res images
Slow loading pages are a real bane for many mobile users when it comes to web design. A lot of the time, the problem is the images you have on your site. Any high-resolution images could cause the pages to load slowly on mobile devices. A neat trick here is to compress them which will solve the issue for you.
Hopefully this should give you a few ideas to put into practice for making your website more welcoming to mobile users. If you need any expert help or advice, or perhaps want to take this a step further with a mobile app, then contact us today. Based in Liverpool, we are one of the UK’s premier web design companies and happy to help.