Today, a mobile-optimized website gets more traction than a desktop-friendly site. According to Statista’s 2021 report, there are 4.66 billion active users globally, out of which 4.32 billion are mobile users.
With most of them being mobile users, they want convenience with quality, and mobile phones cater to both of those needs. Users can buy, sell, and get informed through their mobile devices, which is why as a business owner, you need to ensure that your website is optimized for mobile.
And, how will you do that?
Well, here are some tips that will help in the process:
Get your design in order
First things first, a website’s design is the main hurdle in the journey to mobile friendliness.
If your design is messed up, users will bounce back fairly quickly, which is why you must ensure that your CTA buttons, colors, footers, and menu bars are displayed appropriately on mobile too. Moreover, content should be located in the right areas so that customers find it convenient to figure out what your website is all about in one glance.
Optimize your images
Images help visitors process information faster. However, images can encroach on too much space resulting in higher load time.
So, to remedy that, you must resize them according to mobile devices. Ideally, 600×700 pixels are a suitable dimension to go with when it comes to mobile.
Moreover, avoid using PNG and JPEG file formats. I know they are the go-to standards for images but, there are better options available too. For example, WebP and SVG are two great replacements for JPEG and PNG. SVG can automatically scale your image according to the screen eliminating the loading of certain visual compounds.
Keep your website secure
Everything else becomes secondary if your website is unprotected.
The best way to maintain a robust security standard is by installing an SSL or Secured Socket Layer certificate. An SSL certificate is a cryptographic security technology used to secure in-transit communications between two entities on a computer network.
It restricts any third-party intervention and prevents hackers from manipulating or stealing your information. SSL can be many types starting from single domain to multi-domain and wildcard SSL. It completely depends upon the site’s structure that how many domains a site holder wants to secure, for example, a cheap wildcard SSL is for subdomains covered in a single domain. The reason to choose discounted SSL is to save further cert management costs and making a site with strong security.
So, equip your website with the right kind of SSL certificate and ensure its safety in the cybersphere.
Resort to pre-loading and lazy loading
To ensure an optimum mobile experience, we need to be a bit smart. Options like pre-loading and lazy loading can be a make-or-break factor when it comes to website load time.
Where pre-loading assumes and loads the next page a user is likely to go to, lazy loading loads only a particular portion of the content at first and displays to the user’s mobile screen. Successive content only loads when a user scrolls down on the website. This intelligent strategy does not allow all loading to be done in one go and displays the website quickly on a user’s smartphone.
Integrate web caching
Once a user visits a page and gets loaded, web caching stores a copy of it to the website’s page. The next time when the user tries to revisit the page, it does not load. Instead, it displays the copy version of the page. This technique saves users time to load it once again. Especially those pages that are bulked with images and videos, cached versions can be effective for them.
So, integrate it into your website and make your website mobile-optimized.
Reduce popup frequency
Nothing kills an optimum experience than unwanted popups.
Users hate irrelevant popups, which is why it is best to keep them to a bare minimum. While auditing your site, popups should be amongst the first things to watch out for. Do ensure that they are placed in the corners where they do not hide the content.
Moreover, keep them concise; they should not be too big to occupy the whole mobile screen, which would be the biggest turn-off for a user.
Do not allow more than one popup at a time. You do not want to distract a user who is fetching important information from your site.
Watch out for the size of menu bars and contact forms
Unlike desktops where you can play with your header, footers, and contact forms, mobile screens do not allow you that leverage.
Do not use fancy menu bars where a user has to zoom in or out to view what is written. A good mobile-optimized website has an uncomplicated menu bar layout that perfectly fits the menu screen. Moreover, your contact forms should not be longer than a scroll which means that a user should only be asked to scroll once to fill the contact form.
Mobile optimized websites are the new normal. If your website lacks the latest optimization methods, you are in for a disaster in today’s world.
Websites in 2021 are made keeping the mobile in mind. As a business owner, you must be prepared for the upcoming challenges of technology and cybersecurity. Keep your website interface the simplest you can and protect it by installing security protocols like SSL security. Run proper audit sessions to figure out the challenges customers face while using your website through their mobile devices.
By following these seven tips, you can turn an average desktop site into a robust, mobile-friendly one!
