Mobile traffic accounts for approximately 51% of web traffic (as of the third quarter 2019), so making sure that your website is responsive is crucial to ensuring a positive user experience for all site visitors. While it’s now pretty standard for WordPress themes to be responsive, there are still a few things to take into consideration when optimizing your website for mobile viewing.
Don’t make your website too complicated or overstimulating
When there’s too much content on a desktop website, it will look REALLY crowded on a much smaller mobile or tablet screen. Keep your content to a minimum and make sure it includes the essentials, and not details that aren’t necessary for your website visitor. It’s not about filling space, but rather keeping white space to make the viewer focus on your messaging which is what’s most important!
Choose Photos and Videos Carefully
While compelling photographs and video are great for engaging website visitors, make sure they are not too heavy as they will slow your site’s loading speed, which can result in a poor experience for site viewers and a resulting increase in your bounce rate. Make sure you are using the right image sizes for your WordPress theme. Plugins that compress images can also help speed up your site and the mobile experience.
Avoid Using Flash or Too Much Javascript
Most of your website visitors aren’t using the latest version of Adobe’s Flash, and a result, won’t be able to access your Flash content. This means that no matter how great that content is, it doesn’t get seen! This is especially true for site visitors logging on from a mobile device. Additionally, Javascript can slow down your site, so limit the number of third-party applications that use it for your site to perform optimally.
Test your Site to see if it’s mobile-friendly according to Google
There is a pretty cool tool that allows you to enter your website’s URL to see if it’s mobile-friendly according to Google. The tool will give you a simple yes or no answer, in addition to providing feedback on how to make your site mobile-friendly, for example, whether there are any page loading issues. It will also show you how your site renders on mobile devices.
Make Sure Your Font Size and Buttons Are Large Enough
You want your text and buttons to be easy for viewers to see on smaller screens. No matter how great your content is, if it’s hard for a site visitor to read, they will get frustrated and leave your site. Make it easy on the eyes and use a larger font size— I recommend something between 16-18 px. Buttons should also be large enough, so they are easily clickable on a smaller screen.
If you’re not sure if your site is mobile-friendly, I would try out this tool and if there’s room to improve. Seaside Digital Design & Marketing is happy to audit your site for you and make suggestions for mobile optimization. Feel free to send us an email if you would like to have this done for your website.