These days, more and more people are browsing the internet on their mobile phones or other connected devices. Mobile browsing has taken the internet by storm and made it far easier for people on the move to stay connected. It’s also opened up new channels for many businesses – and you could take advantage of these. That means there are more ways for people to buy your products, even when they’re on the go or don’t have access to a computer.
You’d be surprised how many businesses have been slow to catch up with this dramatic industry change. Don’t be one of them. If you haven’t optimized your website for mobile browsing already – then you need to do it as soon as possible. While some standard sites load well on mobile browsers without too many changes (or any at all), most don’t. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile browsing, you could be losing loads of potential customers and risking the success of your business. Thankfully, you’re in the right place. We’re going to look at a few tips to get your site sorted for mobile so that your business can reach its full potential online. Let’s have a look at the tips:
1. Install Google AMP
If you haven’t already, try installing Google AMP. It could help dramatically improve page load times for mobile browsers on your site. Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) caches some of your pages to make it load much faster for visitors, and this is especially useful for mobile browsers.
When trying to run a successful online business – every second count. There are tons of reasons why users might give up or click away, and slow page load times is one of the biggest. This is especially important for mobile browsing, where connections might not be fast enough to handle complicated pages-designs and long load times. Especially if someone is busy an on the move – they’ll want that page to load as quickly as possible or they might choose to do something else. That’s where Google AMP can help. A mobile responsive design is hugely important to the success of your business, so you shouldn’t take this lightly.
2. Reduce Images
As we’ve just looked at, load times are super-important for mobile browsing. That’s because phones simply can’t handle large pages that are too complicated, and neither can some mobile connections. So if you want to reduce the chance of people clicking away in frustration, you need to reduce the size of your pages any way possible.
One of the best ways to do this is by reducing both the number of images on your site and the size of them. Especially for any mobile versions of your web pages. While some images are still useful – only use the most important ones for your mobile site and try and make them a bit smaller if you can. Not only do big images take longer to load, but they also clog up the screen and can often detract from the mobile experience of your site.
3. Test Your Site on Multiple Devices
To make sure your mobile site is really running properly, you’ll want to test it. But don’t just test it on one mobile device – try as many as you can. Since there are a lot of different phone operating systems and browsers, it’s not as simple as testing for standard desktop browsing. Make sure you’ve tried your site on as many different portable devices as possible, and as many different browsers as you can find in the app stores.
4. Run A/B Tests with Alternatives
When you’re trying to come up with the best possible mobile page design that maximizes sales as much as possible, you should have a few alternative ideas. When you’ve got these ideas, how can you really know which works best? Run some simple A/B tests where you put different options up against each other. Analyse the data so you can know for sure which is working for you and which isn’t. Some web designers make the mistake of simply asking a couple of people for their opinion on which site is best. This isn’t a big enough sample size. You need to test each alternative with plenty of traffic so you can know for sure.
5. Make Calls-to-Action Clear
On a mobile site, it’s even more important that people know exactly what you want them to do. Whether it’s opt-in to a list or click an affiliate link, this needs to be as clear as possible. Make sure your calls-to-action are clear and above the fold.
6. Check Your Host
If your sites are loading slowly, it might not necessarily be down to your page design and size. Make sure you’ve got the best possible host – one that serves pages that load as quickly as possible, on mobile or otherwise.
7. Reduce Distractions
You haven’t got much space to play with on a mobile browser, so try and limit the distractions as much as possible. Big sidebar ads might work on a traditional browser, but these sort of things aren’t always great on mobile.
8. Make Buttons and Links Easy to Find and Click
Again, not only screen small, but people also have to click with their fingers and thumbs. That means your buttons and other links should be both easy to find as well easy to click on – no matter how big someone’s thumbs are.
9. Improve Input Forms
Inputting large amounts of info on mobiles isn’t always that easy, so you might want to integrate some specialist forms that only require something like a phone number.
10. Eliminate Pop-Ups
Pop-ups are one of the biggest no-nos in online browsing. They’re annoying, and they could lose you tons of potential customers. If you want to make your mobile site a success, eliminate pop-ups.
Hopefully, these ten tips have been enough to get you started. A good mobile site is a necessity these days, so don’t make the mistake of ignoring how much of an impact a well-designed site could have for your business.
