The majority of online searches are now made on a mobile device. This number will only increase as more and more people around the world get online using a mobile device. It’s more important than ever that your website is now mobile-friendly. If you’ve taken a look at your site on your smartphone or another device, and you’ve found it to be lacking, there are solutions. Let’s take a look at a few ways to improve your mobile website in 2022.
Why Is a Mobile-Friendly Website Important?
First, what is a mobile-friendly website? And why is it important?
A mobile-friendly website simply means that your website is easy to navigate and use on a mobile device, like a smartphone. Many websites are now designed to be responsive, so they reorganize themselves automatically on a mobile device. This makes them easy to navigate, but there can be other issues, such as slow loading times, or text that isn’t easily readable. We’ll explore some of these issues through our list of ways to improve your mobile website in 2022.
Why Does a Mobile Site Matter?
As previously mentioned, mobile searches are now the most popular type of search. This has been true for several years, and search engines have made adjustments to their algorithm in response. Google states the following reasons why mobile-friendly sites are important:
- Mobile-friendly sites show up higher in search results
- Mobile searches make up more than half of searches on Google.com
- For many sites, the majority of traffic comes from people on their mobile phones
- If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, visitors are 5 times more likely to leave
With this in mind, let’s explore some ways to improve your mobile website in 2022.
11 Tricks to Improve Your Mobile Website in 2022
1. Test Your Site
The first trick to improve your mobile website in 2022 might seem obvious, but it’s a step that many overlook. First, test your site. This will show you where your site has issues, where navigation or legibility becomes difficult, and where you should focus your efforts. Google’s mobile-friendly site test is a great place to start.
Test your site on multiple mobile devices and browsers. This way, you can see how many different users are seeing your site. Click around your site, or ask a friend or client to test your site. Don’t give your tester any instruction; see how they navigate your mobile site naturally. If they find it difficult to complete important tasks, you’ll know where to make some corrections.
2. Make it Responsive
Though there are several ways to make mobile-friendly sites, responsive sites are widely-agreed to be the best way. Responsive sites will automatically reorganize essential elements to fit the user’s screen. This takes care of most of the heavy-lifting for your mobile site. Responsive sites also use the same URLs, which is better for SEO. If your site isn’t responsive, this is the best trick to improve your mobile website in 2022.
3. Easy Navigation
Though a responsive site will reorganize elements in a way that looks appealing on a mobile device, it won’t adjust how your sitemap is organized, or how your navigation works.
The most common navigation best practice for mobile sites is to use the “hamburger” menu icon, which appears as three parallel lines. This is commonly understood to signify a menu, and users will know to click on this icon. When users click this button, they should be able to easily access other essential pages. This navigation should be somewhat simple; working with multiple nested menus on a mobile device can be difficult. Put your most important pages first.
4. Adjust Button Sizes
If essential buttons, like your hamburger menu button, homepage button, or calls-to-action are difficult to select, you’ll need to make these bigger. Make sure the buttons are spaced appropriately, so users don’t accidentally click multiple buttons at once. Buttons that are difficult to click will quickly frustrate users, and cause them to leave your site.
5. Make Text Legible
This is one of the most common problems with mobile sites. Users should not have to zoom in to read your text on their device. If your text is too small, you might have too many elements competing for a user’s attention on your mobile site. See if you can streamline your design a bit. Or, if your design is streamlined, you might need to simply increase your font size. In general, your font should be at least 16 pixels for mobile websites.
6. Adjust Colors
If your colors do not have a high enough level of contrast, this will make your site difficult to read on any device, but the difficulty will increase with a smaller screen. Remember that those with color blindness will see the color spectrum differently. Use Web AIM’s color contrast checker to make sure your colors have enough contrast.
7. Avoid Pop-Ups
You may have experienced the frustration of pop-ups and interstitial ads on your mobile device before. Often, pop-ups are difficult to close and make the site harder to use. Pop-ups and interstitials will also hurt your SEO. In general, avoid pop-ups and interstitial ads on your website. You might replace these with ads at the top or bottom of the page.
8. Speed Up Load Times
If your site takes too long to load, users won’t stick around. Speeding up loading times is one of the best ways to improve your mobile website in 2022. This will help your desktop website experience as well.
One of the first ways to improve loading speed is to compress images. Plugins and tools like Squoosh, ImageOptim, and WP Smush will take care of this process for you. Another method to improve your load times is to eliminate unnecessary coding on your site. If you’re not sure what is causing your site to load slowly, try Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
9. Set Viewport
How does a browser know how to display a page accurately on a user’s device? Since there are so many different types of mobile devices and many different screen sizes, it might seem strange that most websites and applications readjust automatically. This is partially due to the meta viewport tag. The meta viewport tag tells a browser how to scale a page. If this tag isn’t set properly, the page won’t appear properly on many devices. Set the viewport tag properly and your pages will readjust to suit the user’s screen, so they don’t have to pinch the screen or scroll.
10. Unblock JavaScript, CSS, and Image Files
JavaScript, CSS and image files are essential for users as well as web crawlers, which Google and other search engines use to determine how and where to rank your site on a search. If these elements are blocked, it will be difficult for users to find and use your mobile site. You’ll need to take a look at your robots.txt file to make sure these elements are unblocked. If you’re not sure what this is, don’t worry, the next trick will help.
11. Check in With Google Search Console
Google Search Console offers many useful insights about your website, and suggestions for how to fix problems. Every website is a bit different, so these tips to improve your mobile website in 2022 probably won’t completely cover the mobile obstacles your site might have. The Mobile Usability Report, in particular, will highlight issues on the mobile side of your site. This might include elements that are slowing down your load times, broken links, bugs, incompatible plug-ins, and much more.
These 11 tricks can help you improve your mobile website dramatically. If your mobile site generally works, but your mobile traffic seems strangely low or you encountered a few problems when you tested your site, see if you can make changes. Work through this list step by step, and remember that any improvements you make are a step in the right direction. If your mobile website is very difficult to navigate, your site might be outdated. Consider a website redesign that includes responsive web design.