In late 2016, mobile device usage to access the Internet surpassed computer usage to access the Internet for the first time in the digital era. Fast forward four years and a large majority of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.
Because of the mass shift in the devices used to access websites, businesses must design their websites to be mobile-friendly. If you fail to adapt to the mobile device revolution, you can expect to drive away much of your website traffic, which will hurt your website’s position in the major search engines.
Let’s see how a business should design a website for mobile devices.
Test Your Website for Mobile Compatibility
Before we dive into the strategies that produce effective website designs for mobile devices, you should first check to see if your business website isn’t already mobile device compatible. Google offers a testing tool that helps businesses determine if their websites need changes to adapt to the mobile device revolution.
If the testing tool from Google demonstrates your business website needs to make several changes, then turning your website into a mobile-friendly online source of information should be your top priority. Even if you pass the Google test, the search engine giant will make suggestions on how to make your website mobile-friendlier.
Tips on How to Create Website Design for Mobile Devices
Ask a roomful of website design specialist what is the most important element in creating a mobile-friendly website, and most of the answers would be responsive web design. Responsive web design means you develop a website design that works well for any device used to access the website. This means you do not have to create multiple design versions of your website to adapt to different hardware platforms.
Responsive website design is all about a web page displaying information based on the size of the mobile device that accessed the web page. Working with an experienced web design company should help make your business website mobile-friendlier.
- The web design expert that works with you also might recommend implementing one or more of the following strategies for uploading a mobile-friendly website design:
- Eliminate ads and pop-ups that block content
- Make information easy to access
- Clean, simple design elements
- Increase web page download speeds
- Develop buttons that are large enough to see
- Do not use flash
- Present content with large font sizes
- Bold important content
- Add a button that switches the content to desktop view
Conduct Regularly Scheduled Mobile Device Tests
Making the changes required for your website visitors to have the best experiences while using mobile devices is just the start of your mobile-friendly plan. You also have to conduct tests at regularly scheduled times to ensure your business website remains mobile-friendly. The best part is you do not have to use a fancy tool provided by a high-tech giant like Google.
Every two weeks use your phone and/or tablet to browse your business website. The goal is to detect any page or pages that have become difficult to download and/or view. You should also ask the members of your team to do the same to cover as many types of mobile devices as possible. The quicker you notice the changes that diminish the experiences of users that use mobile devices, the more likely you will prevent a mass exodus of visitors from your website.
Stay on Top of Rapidly Changing Technology
The high-performance mobile devices of today will be the obsolete mobile devices of tomorrow. Constantly changing technology makes it important that either you stay on top of the rapidly changing high tech landscape or you work with a web design professional who specializes in creating mobile-friendly web pages.
To learn more about how to design your business website for mobile devices, call JPG Designs at 401-737-9321 or use the short online contact form.
