How often do you visit your company’s website on a mobile device? You may have a great website when viewed on a desktop or laptop, but unless your site is optimized for mobile devices, you’re losing customers.
If you don’t think how your site loads and looks on a phone or tablet is important, here are some statistics to consider:
- Google ranks slow-loading pages lower in searches, and suggests that pages load in two seconds or less
- 53% of mobile website visits are abandoned if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load
- 60% of mobile users say they won’t return to a site they had problems accessing, and 40% will go to a competitor’s site
- 57% of mobile users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site
Optimizing your site for mobile devices is crucial to getting new customers and keeping current customers. To be certain your business has a mobile-friendly presence, there are five elements to keep in mind when optimizing your site for mobile users.
Watch Your Speed
A page that takes two seconds to load has a bounce rate of less than 10%. A page that takes seven seconds to load has a bounce rate of 32.3%. It’s an impatient world, and your slow-loading page is driving customers to your competitors’ website. Most often, graphics are the culprit in lowering the speed at which a page loads. You can test the speed of your website here.
Use Responsive Layouts
Websites were once made to be viewed on desktop or laptop screens. When phones and tablets were first introduced, websites needed to create separate coding to display on a mobile device. Today, smart web designers use responsive layouts, which automatically adjust to any screen size. Responsive layouts usually are designed for mobile screens first, which is the opposite of how it used to be.
Don’t Annoy Users
Certain technologies and design features that may work on desktops and laptops, shouldn’t be used on mobile devices. For example:
- The Flash plug-in may not be available on all mobile devices, so avoid using it
- Pop-ups are irritating on any screen, but are particularly hard to remove on mobile devices
- Remember the screen size, and make your page layouts user-friendly to those with bad eyes or fat fingers
Optimize for Local Searches
Mobile devices are…well…mobile. Users are often walking or driving and if you have a local, brick-and-mortar presence, be certain that your site is optimized so that your company appears in local searches and provide a Google Map for those trying to find your business.
Test and Simplify
An iPhone SE has a four-inch screen with 1,136 x 640 pixels. Too much information on that small a screen will overwhelm users and have them fleeing for your competitor’s site. It’s important to simplify the elements on your site until you have only what’s necessary, while keeping an attractive, inviting design. Create a test site that you can access on an iPhone, or use an online emulator, and eliminate anything that doesn’t work well or doesn’t fit. Architect Mies van der Rohe said, “Less is more,” and that’s especially true when optimizing for mobile devices.
If you’d like to be certain your company’s website is mobile-friendly, but don’t have a lot of time to invest in redesigning and optimizing your current site, let the experts and McFadden-Gavender do it for you. Our experienced web developers will redesign, optimize, and manage your website, leaving you time to deal with all the new customers you’ll have.
