There is no need to explain that your website should be mobile friendly or have a responsive design or compatible with small screen sizes. With so much information available on internet we all are aware that how important it is to keep your website optimized for mobile phone devices.
Those who are not aware here is the mobile traffic data from first quarter 2017 to second quarter 2018.
Hover the bars to see the percentage traffic on mobile phones.
It is imperative that these numbers will keep on growing.
Since the advent of internet on mobile phones it is becoming easier for consumers to search for services and products and buy them on a click. It is only possible for you to reap the benefits of growing mobile traffic if you website keeps the users engaging on mobile devices and give them a smooth experience.
Here are 6 important questions you must ask when you optimize your website for mobile phone users.
1. My website looks fine on mobile phones. Is that enough for optimizing website for mobile users?
Are you using a ready made responsive theme? Like there are thousands of them available at a fraction of the cost. WordPress gives you thousands of themes which the sellers claim are fully responsive.
In realty they are just only responsive website themes which just rearrange the sections as the size of the device screens. Many of them are very poorly coded which is not possible for you to figure out until your are an experienced WordPress developer.
As per the latest Google’s research around 61% of mobile visitors don’t return to a mobile website where they had problem while browsing and almost 40% move to your competitor’s website.
There are many important aspects of a mobile friendly or responsive website which are critical to the performance of your website on mobile phone. Here are some of them.
- Mobile page speed optimization.
- Images optimization
- Plugins optimization
- Web hosting
- Website layout
If you are not a developer then you can take help from professional WordPress design agency. You can also hire dedicated WordPress developer at an affordable price
2. Should I have a separate mobile website or make my existing running website responsive in design?
These are two options you have while optimizing your website for mobile devices, first option means you make another website for mobile phones apart from your existing website. The second option is to make your website have responsive design which displays same content differently on the screens of different sizes.
Having two website means for desktops and laptops users will see www.example.com and on mobiles or tablets users will see something like m.example.com where m means mobile version of your main website.
Our experience as a web design company for over 10 years now says always go for responsive web design. We have experienced that even major search engines too like one responsive website.
3. What are the important features of a mobile phone optimized website?
There are many features of a responsive web design. Below are some of the critical ones.
User-friendly website design: Make the pages of your website user friendly as much as you can. There are thousands of mobile phone variants available and customers will invest their time on those websites which give them the best user experience on their mobile phone. Best responsive websites open perfect on every device no matter what the screen size is being used.
Prominent display of address: You need to make sure your business address is displayed very prominently to make it easy for your customers to find your information.
Click to call on phone numbers: Your business phone number should also be displayed big and bold and make sure they have click to call active on them. Users should be able to call you on a click from their phones. It is always irritating to copy the phone number from a website and pasting it in your phone to make a call.
Include a map: Always include a map for the directions to your business office. With the increasing use of GPS and services like Google maps people find it easier if they get a map on the website for directions.
4. How to make my website talk with social media?
Social media integration is the best way to advertise your business for free and get traffic to your website. If you write articles on your website make sure it can be shared smoothly with a click. If your website visitors like you articles they are most likely to share it on their social networks provided if they can do it smoothly and quick.
If you have a membership site or an ecommerce website then social login is the best and the fastest way to get users registered on your website as compared to filling up annoying registration forms on a website.
It is always advised not to overdo social media integration.
5. How will I test my website for mobile phone optimization before making it live?
You can simply check your website on different browsers to make sure it looks good on all the browsers available on mobile phones as some codes like CSS have different performance on different browsers.
You also need to check your website on as many mobile phones as possible. This doesn’t means you have to buy all these phones. These days there are so many responsive checker tools available online. Just type the keyword, ‘online responsive checker’ in Google and you will get a lot of tools available for free.
6. Should I hire a professional web design company?
There should not be a second thought on hiring a professional web designer instead of trying it yourself and messing it all. We don’t say you can’t do it but you may take months to study and then make your website responsive.
There are good website design agencies who offer web design services at an affordable cost. You can even hire dedicated web designer on a minimal monthly price.
But make sure who you are hiring, here are some FAQs on outsourcing your web design work.
