Did you know that just over half of all web traffic comes from mobile phones? If your site isn’t optimized for mobile users, 50% of your potential clients won’t even consider your services. Let’s fix that!
What is mobile optimization?
Mobile optimization is the process of altering your website content for easy viewing on mobile devices. For example, making sure your content adjusts to fit on smaller screens. Changes you make for mobile viewing won’t be reflected on the desktop version of your site.
The goal of mobile optimization is to create a consistent user experience. The following steps will help you do just that!
Step 1: Testing Your Site
Before taking any action, you need to know how your site currently functions on mobile devices. There are two ways to test this. First, using all your different devices, pull up your website to see for yourself how well the design works on a smaller screen.
For a deeper analysis of how your site functions on mobile devices, you can use Google’s free testing tool: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly. Simply type in your site URL and select ‘Run Test’ to generate a report.
Step 2: Use a Responsive Theme
Many website themes come preloaded with tools to optimize your site for mobile users. Look for themes that are ‘responsive.’ This means that regardless of what device, browser, and screen size it’s viewed on, your site’s design will be delivered properly.
Step 3: Check Your Site’s Loading Times
You have mere seconds to make an impression on potential clients. If your site takes longer than 5 seconds to load, you can say goodbye to the majority of your site visitors. Good news, Google offers another free tool to help: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/testmysite/.
The tool will scan your website to see how quickly it loads on a mobile device and provide a report with tips on improving the user experience. A few basic ways to optimize your site’s load time include using up-to-date software, add a free caching plugin, and compress large file images.
Step 4: Pop-Ups for Mobile Devices
Pop-ups are one of the most effective methods of grabbing a visitor’s attention. However, this can become an issue when screen space is limited.
Configure your pop-ups to be as non-obstructive as possible, only covering a small fraction of mobile device screens. Pop-ups also need to be easy to close.
Step 5: Enable Accelerated Mobile Pages
Google developed AMP, Accelerated Mobile Pages for mobile devices.
AMP is a method for creating mobile-friendly versions of your site’s pages consisting of three parts: HTML specification, JavaScript Library, and cache specification. Essentially, AMP strips down your site’s content and removes unnecessary media files and advanced layouts for mobile optimization.
The best part, you don’t need to understand all the technical details to take advantage of this technology for your firm’s site. To create your own AMP pages, add an AMP plugin to your website.
We’re all living in a mobile-first world. Now your website can perform its best in one too! Optimizing your site to perform well on mobile devices is key to attracting more clients and growing your practice.
