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5 Ways to Make Your Website Mobile “Friendlier”

Author: Tom Cottrill | Date Posted: Apr 28, 2020

It seems like just yesterday every website was scrambling to get their mobile sites up and running to beat the mobile-first indexing that Google unrolled a couple years back. But now those same websites might be wondering how to make their mobile-friendly sites even “friendlier” knowing that by September 2020 mobile-first indexing will become the default behavior for all sites.

After the initial updates you made, your mobile site probably fell back down in the priority list. But, there is never a wrong time to refresh your knowledge of what makes for a mobile-friendly site. And it’s never a wrong time to make your site even friendlier to your mobile users.

Below are just a few high-level suggestions to help you get the ball rolling and start making improvements that will help with usability, give Google a reason to re-crawl your site, and hopefully lead to more conversions.

1. Optimize your images –Image size is the number one killer of website speed, and it’s even more critical on a phone. Simply running your images through Optimizilla can make up to a 30 percent difference in page speed. And that’s nothing to laugh at.

2. Make your buttons bigger – Small buttons on mobile are hard to hit, and cause users to pinch and zoom and get frustrated. Google even uses tap-target size as a metric for ranking. So, making this simple switch can have a positive impact.

3. Don’t use forms, if at all possible – Look for Click to Buy options, or call now. Filling out forms on mobile, while sometimes necessary, is always hard. The less data entry the easier.

4. Update your site’s software – Using outdated software to run your website is putting you at risk for security issues and can actually prevent your site from running as efficiently as it should.
   

5. Redesign your pop-ups – In the world where every site has a pop-up, you need to make sure they are optimized for mobile. This means making them easy to close and non-obstructive.

There are tons of ways to improve the mobile friendliness of your site. If you’re not sure where to start, we suggest putting your site through Google’s mobile-friendly test tool. From there you’ll be able to easily identify the best place to start when making improvements. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by it all, feel free to give us a call. We’re happy to help point you in the right direction!