It’s no surprise that mobile websites are getting its share of popularity. While it’s favorable having the web at our fingertips, websites that require you to pinch and zoom to read content or to interact with the site are becoming more and more convenient. If your website is not yet mobile ready, then you may be turning off a lot of visitors and losing potential customers. Because more people search through mobile than on desktops, mobile generates more page views which means more sales. If your website is not mobile-friendly, users are more likely to leave. And if your site is too slow, then they may not even wait for your page to load.
Millions of smartphone users are not just using mobile devices to make phone calls and send emails and text messages. They are mostly using their mobile devices to surf the Internet for news and information, shop and make purchases online, and connect with their social networks. So if your website is not fully optimized for mobile traffic, then you better step up your game. Creating an accessible and responsive mobile website isn’t quite difficult when you apply the best techniques and consider the needs of all the people who are visiting your site. To help you achieve a mobile-friendly website, the following tips will help you make your mobile site more accessible for your visitors.
Make the Design Simple
A lot of users struggle to read certain fonts and understand a text on colored backgrounds, especially those on smaller devices. Having a clean design and simple design can go a long way. Remember that you only have a few seconds to get your viewers attention and get your message across. This is true for any website design, but is most important when you are designing for smaller devices. Too many distractions can greatly affect the site’s ability to load quickly. If you plan on using images, try and use images that are smaller in size as this will reduce the amount of time that users have to spend spend waiting for the page to load.
Use Responsive Design
Having a responsive design can create a website that will be easily viewable on different sizes of devices. This can reduce the amount of work website developers have to do when it comes to creating an accessible website. A responsive design makes use of flexible images and layouts that makes browsing seamlessly smooth. When responsive design is used on a website, the web page will be able to detect the visitor’s screen size and orientation and change the layout accordingly to each type of device.
Keep Content Short
People sometimes go overboard with content and it makes the mobile site too cluttered. Figure out how to tell your story with just a few words. The screen on a smartphone is much smaller than compared to a desktop, so try to minimize the amount of text on your mobile website. Mobile users are interested in scrolling quickly so include only essential text to keep the reader’s attention. The first step in creating a mobile site is deciding the information you want to include. With only limited screen space, it’s important to figure out what information your visitors will be searching for. The easier it is for users to access information, the better the user’s experience will be.
Check Page Speed
Page speed is an important element for mobile when users are out and about looking for quick answers and information. A certain page that may load relatively quickly on desktops but may not load quite the same as on a mobile device. There are, however, a range of best practices that can improve page speed. Google has enabled us to easily assess how fast our pages load and what we can do to improve it. Be sure to remove down those heavy media files that are placed on your website.
Test Each Page
Always remember to test each page to make sure that your content can be properly viewed on different devices. Remember to test the mobile user experience to improve the overall site experience with the use of usability testing. Once you’ve created your responsive website, test it, test it on a new device, and then test it again on a different one.Test every page and while you’re testing, it’s always important to put yourself in the position of the user.