Mobile Era: What You Can Do To Make Your Store EXTRA Mobile Friendly

Is your site ready for the mobile era we live in? Mobile devices have advanced so much since they first became available to the public more than three decades ago.

Today, smartphones and tablets are used for more than just communication. With their computing power and connection to the internet, they have also become tools for education, entertainment, social networking, and even business.

In fact, their value in business is so great that as a business owner, one of the best ways to prime your brand for success is to build a mobile-friendly website.

Mobile-friendliness and Your Company’s Success

Your prospective customers are likely connected to the internet (along with more than half of the world’s population) and most of them are probably browsing online through their mobile device.

A website that represents your brand is great. But if it’s not optimized for mobile devices, you could be missing out on a lot of business.

Users expect a positive experience when they go to your site. If your site is mobile-friendly, users can view and engage with your content comfortably and easily even through the smaller screens of their smartphones and tablets.

This experience is extremely important to your bottom line. Google says about 61 percent of visitors who experience difficulty accessing a mobile site leave — never to return. And 40% go to competitor websites instead.

Mobile-friendliness affects your search visibility as well. Google crawls the mobile version of your site before it does the desktop version, so optimizing for mobile means users are more likely to find your site on the first page of search results.

Creating a Website Mobile Users Trust and Enjoy

Optimizing your website for mobile isn’t a one-step process. Here are strategies you can use for your site:

• Adopt a responsive design

A responsive design means your website adjusts to different screen sizes and resolutions, making its content readable whether it’s viewed from a desktop computer, a smartphone, or a tablet.

You may need to hire a professional developer to do this for you, but certain CMS platforms make the process a bit easier.

• Allow users to find information easily

Many mobile users access the internet on the go, so they need the information they want to be readily available to them. When designing your site or writing your content, ask yourself what visitors would want to know and give it to them.

Adding an FAQ that answers users’ most common questions would also help.

• Disable autocorrect for forms

If your site has forms for users to fill in, such as fields for their name or address, autocorrect would keep changing their responses to similar common words. This would slow down the process and possibly annoy users.

• Increase the size of your buttons

Large fingers can make it hard to work on small touchscreens. Make the buttons on your site larger and reasonably spaced apart from each other. Small buttons are annoying for users and will make your site less convenient to navigate.

• Increase your font size

Even with a responsive design, your content may remain hard to read if you use small font sizes that are optimized for bigger screens.

• Allow users to switch to desktop view

Some users prefer the desktop version over the mobile version of your site. Help them browse conveniently by letting them change to and from either version with a single button.

• Enhance loading speed

As previously stated, many mobile users want information fast. If your website loads slowly, you could lose conversions and revenue. Avoid content that uses Flash, not just because it doesn’t work in some browsers, but also because it slows down your site’s loading time.

It’s also best to stick to standard font styles for your content as specialized designs can weigh your site’s loading time down.

• Test your mobile site regularly

Make sure your mobile site works perfectly by pulling it up on your own smartphone or tablet. Put yourself in your site visitors’ shoes and take note of any element that needs improvement.

Dos and Don’ts in Mobile-friendly Design

Right off the bat, developing your site for mobile-friendliness won’t be a simple matter, especially if you already have a website. Although you may not have to redo everything from scratch, you will have to put careful thought into all the elements you will incorporate in your website design moving forward.

Here are mobile-friendly design dos and don’ts to keep in mind:

Mobile Design Dos

• Do keep user experience a priority

Remember that at the end of the day, mobile-friendliness is all about user experience. With more people browsing using their smartphones or tablets, your mobile site will need to be designed with these visitors’ convenience in mind.

User experience is crucial because it affects how people view your brand.

• Do keep your website light

In creating a website that’s light and optimized for speed, it’s essential to make every element matter. Avoid unnecessary fonts, images, videos, animations, and other design elements that do not contribute to the experience offered by your site or the way it represents your brand.

• Do design for mobile first

It’s easier to start designing a fully responsive mobile site and then scale up to a desktop-optimized website than to cram all the content in your conventional site into a mobile website.

• Do keep your content focused

Unnecessary blocks of text can distract users from their purpose of viewing your site and many of them will be annoyed by this. Streamline your content and keep your copy simple and straightforward. If possible, use engaging animations, images, and videos instead of text.

Mobile Design Don’ts

• Don’t do it just because

Sure, mobile use is on the rise, but don’t shift to a mobile-responsive website just to join the trend. The change in people’s web-browsing habits reflects a need, a demand, and an opportunity that you can fill by developing the right mobile app or website.

• Don’t strip down your content

You won’t be able to cram all your desktop website’s content into your mobile site, but this shouldn’t stop you from providing a complete experience to your visitors.

Opt for more compatible design elements, but make sure no content is ever hidden from visitors when they access your site’s mobile version.

• Don’t clutter your website

Speed isn’t just about loading time, it’s also about how you organize the elements of your website. Keep navigation straightforward and remove any element that will stop visitors from reaching their goals.

• Don’t forget your branding

Your mobile site will not be an exact replica of its desktop version. But it must contain all the elements that represent your brand. You can retain your brand’s colors, typography, copy, logos, images, and others that customers have come to associate with your business.

Mobile Era Conclusion

The tides of business are changing and they are shifting in favor of mobile. As a business owner, embracing these changes and adopting mobile-friendly strategies would benefit your brand and gear it up for success.

Bonus Reading

Learn more about mobile-friendliness from the following:

• Why User Experience (UX) Design will Be Everything in 2019
• WordPress vs. DIY Website Builders: Which One Should You Use?
• Marketer’s Guide to the Top Social Media Trends in 2019
• Why Desktop vs Smartphone Matters for Your Marketing – Here’s Why #156
• 6 Trends that Will Shape Mobile Marketing in 2019
• Why Responsive Design is Important and Google Approved

After getting a deeper understanding of what makes a good mobile-friendly website, navigate the sites. How intuitive was the site design? What do you think of the sites’ overall UX? What about the loading time? How could they have been better?

Let us know what your thoughts are in the comments below.

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Stacey Louis

Stacey is an artist, and a branding & content consultant with experience ranging from design to business development. Love sharing my expertise, from micro to macro, with anyone who can benefit from it.

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• Mobile Era: What You Can Do To Make Your Store EXTRA Mobile Friendly - April 22, 2019