With Google announcing that they will be prioritizing the mobile version of websites for indexing and ranking on July 1, 2019, not having a mobile-friendly website in 2020 is a business liability. This means if your website doesn’t have a mobile-friendly version yet, you run the risk of not appearing on any Google search results.
The good thing about this news is that once Google detects that your website has been updated to include a mobile version, your ranking will improve quickly. The tricky part is in ensuring that every element of your mobile website is done correctly!
To help you out in this regard, here are four helpful tips to remember when designing a mobile-friendly website:
Go for mobile-first
In web design development, mobile-first means designing a website that prioritizes the experience on mobile devices first before scaling it up to a full desktop version. Website development companies favour this approach because it prioritizes content over unnecessary decorations.
The mobile-first approach ensures a consistent user experience level by forcing you to remove any unnecessary elements from the beginning. If your content is readable on mobile, then it’s sure to look good on a desktop’s screen too!
Hide your navigation menus
Navigation menus are an excellent way to organize your most essential pages when viewing on desktop—but they only clutter the smaller screen of mobile phones. An excellent alternative to space-consuming navigation menus is the use of drop-down menus, which slide over when you tap on the menu icon, or a collapsible overlay menu that expands and covers the entire screen.
Optimize your images
Responsive designs depend on appropriately scaled images to achieve a cohesive design!
First of all, use smaller images. Aside from saving on bandwidth, smaller images load quickly and will not ruin your carefully designed layout.
Secondly, compress them. While you may think that high-quality images are the way to go, you typically don’t need the full 1920 by 1080 pixels at 250 pixels-per-inch to make your images look good on websites—especially ones viewed on your phone.
Third, use the correct file format. The ideal file formats for images are .gif, .jpg, and PNG-8. Steer away from PNG, as that particular format can bloat your image size by up to ten times.
The last piece of the puzzle is in handling scaling. To date, there is no perfect solution that will make images look perfect on every screen, considering that screens today come in many sizes. The solution to scaling images can be as simple as setting the image’s maximum width to 100% or using a JQuery plugin.
In any case, understanding how images work is something that your website developer can help you out with.
Don’t be afraid of white space
This tip applies to both mobile and desktop websites but can be trickier to implement in the former. With much less space to work with, your mobile website must stay informative without feeling too cluttered.
One good way to incorporate white space is to avoid using too many banners and animations. While graphics are a welcome addition to a desktop website, these bells and whistles will do nothing but slow your loading times and add unnecessary clutter on your mobile website.
Conclusion
With mobile searches surpassing desktop searches since 2016, it’s easy to see why Google has included mobile-friendliness as one of the confirmed criteria for its search engine rankings. To ensure that your rankings are as optimized as they can be, contact your preferred website development services today!
Are you looking for a website development company to help design a mobile-friendly website for your business? Analytics Beyond is a Toronto-based digital marketing company that serves businesses all over North America. We provide website development, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click advertising services to help boost your brand’s visibility in the online world. Contact us today to learn more about our services!