How to Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices

Everyone has a smartphone these days – it’s practically impossible to get by without one. And with these internet-connected pocket computers so prevalent, it’s no surprise that mobile web traffic has passed desktop by a margin that keeps expanding. As of the first quarter of 2023, roughly 53% of all web traffic in the US comes from a mobile device. 

But occasionally, you’ll click on a link or web address and be faced with a dinosaur of a website that doesn’t work correctly on your phone or tablet. So, what do you do?

If you’re like many people, you back out of that site and look for an alternative. This is a mild inconvenience for searchers, but what about the site’s owners? How many visitors are they driving away with their archaic design? And how much money is that costing them? 

Don’t let your website fall victim – here’s what you need to know to make sure your site looks great on any site, keeping visitors happy and traffic high.

Is Responsive Design Important for SEO?

Ever a forward-thinking company, Google recognized the trend toward mobile browsing long before others did and switched to mobile-first indexing back in September 2020. This means it uses the mobile version of a site’s content for crawling, indexing and ranking.

As such, this places a strong emphasis on sites being mobile friendly when it comes to search engine optimization. 

What Makes a Website Mobile-Friendly?

A mobile-friendly site will use what is called responsive design, which means it serves the same HTML on the same URL, regardless of device, but it is displayed differently based on screen size.  

There are a few different ways you can implement this. The easiest way is to find a plug-in that works with your website that will automatically make your site mobile-first. If your site is built in WordPress, this could be something like WPTouch. 

While this option is great for people who aren’t comfortable with coding or just want a quick solution, it’s not without its drawbacks. For one thing, plug-ins of any type are prone to crashing or breaking, which could leave you without a mobile site at all. Additionally, they are sometimes targets for hackers.

If you’re confident in your HTML abilities, or have someone for that, it’s more secure and reliable to code responsiveness into your site by hand. There are a lot of resources available to help you with this process, including instructional videos.

Best Practices for Mobile Websites

The technical aspect of responsiveness is by far the most complicated part, but after you have all the coding done, you still need to make sure the site looks and operates well. Here are some best practices for making your mobile site a winner:

Make Your Text Easily Readable 

Use an easy-to-read font, with clearly defined headers and subheads. Avoid long walls of text in favor of 1-3 sentence paragraphs and bulleted lists. 

Highlight Interactive Elements

If you were the type of person who had ever illegally streamed a sporting event or show (which none of you ever would), you may have encountered a dodgy site with which you had to play “Red X Roulette,” in an effort to find the icon that closed the popups.

Your site shouldn’t do that. Make interactive elements obvious, so there’s no doubt about which button needs to be clicked. 

Don’t Block Content with Popups

Speaking of popups, intrusive ones can make it hard for visitors to get the info they’re looking for. This can lead to higher bounce rates and overall negative user experiences. 

Most sites are required to include pop-ups asking for permission to use cookies. Make yours as unobtrusive as possible by having them cover a small portion of the bottom of the screen, rather than completely blocking your content. 

Make Sure Your Site Loads Quickly

Do you know what happens when websites are slow to load? Of course you do, because you’ve done it yourself – they leave the site. Make sure your site loads quickly and smoothly by optimizing and compressing images, using browser caching and eliminating extraneous code.

While you’re at it, make sure you’re fixing technical errors like broken links, bad redirects, faulty scripts and server issues. 

Put the Important Info Above the Fold

In the days when paper newspapers were an important part of life and not an antiquated curiosity, the term “above the fold” meant above the horizontal fold that divided the paper in half. This is where the day’s most important stories went. 

In the internet era, this term has come to mean the part of the screen that’s visible before any scrolling. Put your strongest stuff there, including a good title, a CTA and a navigation bar. 

Mobile Sites Are Important 

At its root, the reason you need a responsive and mobile-friendly website is fairly obvious: you want to make your site as enjoyable to use as possible. 

It will keep your site easily accessible, while allowing your audience to engage with your website across devices without inconvenience. 

More than this, a mobile-friendly website will be more visible in search results, lead to improved brand recognition, and even increase the amount of leads you’re generating. In other words, it’s something you can’t afford to ignore. 

But you’re a busy professional. You don’t have unlimited time to dedicate to search engine optimization and responsive design. That’s where Evisio comes in. 

SEO, Simplified

Evisio takes the hassle out of search engine optimization. It automatically scans your website for SEO weaknesses and opportunities, then provides you with a set of step-by-step, plain-English instructions for addressing them. 
There’s no easier way to optimize any website. You should see it for yourself by trying it for free today!

If you’re looking for SEO project management software to better manage your workflow, clients, and business – evisio.co is your solution. Try evisio.co for free here!