It is no secret that everyone these days is constantly on their phones. In fact, about 60% of online traffic for goods and services comes from mobile devices. However, many people only have a desktop version of their website. But your website will be able to reach more customers if it is optimized for mobile devices. This is a relatively simple measure that can boost business exponentially. All of the largest corporations have mobile responsive design, which signifies their importance in the modern world. If potential customers are on your website while on their phones and it is glitchy and hard to navigate, then mobile users may get frustrated and leave it. In this article, we will explain what makes a website mobile optimized and the benefits of having a mobile-optimized website.
Table of Contents
Characteristics of a Mobile Optimized Website
Essentially, a mobile site, or site that been optimized for mobile phones, makes the user experience of navigating it the same across all platforms. The difference between mobile optimization and other forms of mobile adaptability on websites is that the former is created with mobile devices at the forefront of the design. It enables mobile users from any sort of mobile platform to access your website and have it run smoothly. No matter if mobile users are on a brand new iPhone, an Android, an iPad, or even an old iPod Touch, they will have the same seamless experience.
Benefits of a Mobile Optimization
It only helps your business to have a mobile friendly website. And, it can actually hurt it to not have a mobile site.
Expand Your Audience
The first reason why it is so important to is that it helps expand your audience online. If your website is slow and hard to navigate, then mobile users will leave your page because it is too difficult to use and not worth their time. Since the majority of searches and online activity occurs on mobile devices these days, a mobile-optimized website allows your website to be seen by many more people and increases the probability of sales
Increase Your Revenue
Speaking of sales, this increase leads to higher revenue for your business. Every year, more online transactions and sales occur on mobile platforms. So, it is evermore necessary to have a website that caters to this. More people on their mobile devices on your mobile-friendly website equals higher sales and revenue with less shopping cart abandonment. The more people on their mobile devices and the larger your audience means that your website will have increased traffic. This draws upon the last two points, but it is more meaningful online traffic because when you have an efficient mobile site people are less likely to leave. Mobile friendly content and websites work better on search engines so this leads to higher traffic and more links.
Improve Your Search Engine Ranking
Another reason mobile optimization is so significant is it helps rank your website higher on search engine results. The Google algorithm likes when a website is mobile optimized because so many users utilize these mobile platforms. Mobile optimization is a part of a website’s SEO strategy and involves different techniques and designs compared to traditional desktop pages. Mobile optimization is a form of technical SEO, so it can be beneficial to work with an SEO expert to optimize your website on mobile.
Is it Necessary to Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly?
Even if your traditional website on a desktop performs beautifully, if you have a lackluster mobile website, then your business loses credibility and trust. It gives off the impression that your company either does not know how to create a good mobile website or does not care enough to do so. If customers try to access your website and it is slow and buggy, it questions the respectability and effectiveness of your business.The bottom line of mobile optimization is that it provides a better user experience on mobile devices. A more effective, streamlined mobile website will improve customer satisfaction and generate happy customers. These users are more likely to purchase your website’s products and services and come back for more.
Is Your Website Friendly for Mobile Users?
In order to classify your website as mobile-friendly and then optimize it to its fullest potential, there are a few simple requirements. These basic qualifications consist of making sure that your website loads quickly and that content is easy to find. If your website lacks these things, then it’s important to turn it around and learn how to optimize your website.When searching for things online, people expect quick results and easy website navigation. So, if your website does not reflect that, then they are going to go elsewhere. A good user experience is key to measuring if a website is mobile-friendly or not. Also, a positive impression on your website helps build trust and increase the likelihood that these users turn into customers and generate sales.
How to Optimize Websites for a Mobile Device
Test Your Website for Mobile-Friendliness
The first step in optimizing your website for mobile devices is seeing what your existing baseline is. This will tell you what you need to improve. For example, if your website loads really quickly, but it is difficult to navigate and find content, then you know what your problem is. Google has a tool where you can test your website’s mobile-friendliness which makes it simple to diagnose the issues at hand. It is helpful to use Google’s tool because they are the most popular search engine, so following their guidelines will improve your website. This tool will tell you if your website is mobile-friendly or not. If it is not, then it lays out the issues with it so you can improve them.
Prioritize Mobile Devices
Gone are the days when all searches and website browsing was done on traditional desktop computers. In modern times, it is important to rethink website design and put more emphasis on mobile devices. Since mobile platforms have limited space, it is necessary to prioritize content rather than visual elements and color. There is simply less room on a mobile screen to have interesting designs, so create content that is easily accessible and readable. The vertical design on mobile screens means that your website needs to decide what buttons, elements, and navigation tools are the most important for a user to see. Your business should think about the scrolling of your website to make it as seamless as possible.
Visuals and Bandwidth
Although colorful and interesting visuals like photos, videos, and illustrations make your website look appealing, they are the biggest bandwidth consumers. This causes a slow loading website, especially on mobile devices. Basically, a website with fewer visual elements will load faster. There are a few ways you can balance this and still have interesting visuals and quick loading speeds. The first step is to reduce the size of the images on your website by resizing them. This makes the size of your website itself smaller and saves space for more visual elements. You can also minimize file size with compression tools through software programs to save space on your site. Just because it helps to reduce website size and limit visuals on mobile sites, that does not mean your website has to be uninteresting. It comes down to making decisions that balance the visual aspects with the efficiency and speed of your website to make it an overall user-friendly experience.
Pre-Loading and Lazy-Loading
Preloaders work to communicate to the browser about possible navigations on the site. It is important to note that pre-loading does not have a consistent success rate. It can be dependent on device type and bandwidth. There are a few different types of preloaders that fetch and connect certain things.
- Prefetch: The purpose of prefetchers is that they imply a certain URL will be the next obvious choice in terms of navigation. If the browser proceeds, then it will cache the significant page resources and in turn the following page will load quicker.
- Prerender: This one is just like the previous except it renders the entire page in anticipation.
- Preconnect: This shaves time off of navigation and establishes connections on the site.
Lazy-loading only loads content that a user is currently seeing and this includes large visual elements. There are no SEO issues with lazy-loading and it is viewed by Google as a performance signal.
Utilize Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
The point of AMP is that it helps place a large amount of content into one search result and makes the most of search rankings. It makes your webpage much more bare but allows content to be extremely readable. Accelerated mobile pages make loading times almost non-existent and increases website performance. It encourages websites with lots of visual elements to strip the bells and whistles down to the necessities of what users are really looking for. Quality content and speed are prioritized with this tool.
Why You Should Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices
With much of today’s online traffic coming from mobile devices, you must make sure your website caters to them. Both your desktop version and mobile site need to have a responsive design. Doing so will benefit your ranking on search engine result pages, which leads to increased business. In addition, simply having a website that is easy to navigate on a mobile device can lead to more sales. It means people can make purchases from your website any time it is convenient for them, not just when they are at their computer.
FAQ:
- What is the difference between mobile optimization and mobile-friendly?
- How can I see if my website is mobile-optimized?
- Can I make a mobile-optimized website myself?
- Are mobile-optimized websites part of SEO?
- Should a mobile-optimized website load fast?
Contact Us Today!