Every other passing day you can see new updates being released by the Google algorithm. All the algorithm updates have their unique proposition that the website owners and marketers need to address the issues from their website. One such popular update is the mobile-friendly website. It is important to understand what is a mobile-friendly website and why is it important to optimize.
As you all know that the time taken for a website to get loaded on a mobile device and tablet is slower compared to a desktop device. This can be because of the limited data connectivity or the bandwidth the device has. To address this issue, Google has made mobile-friendly factor a major ranking signal when it comes to showing your website on search engine results.
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What is a mobile-friendly website?
The term mobile-friendly website refers to a site that is completely optimized to load across multiple mobile devices. Irrespective of their brand, dimensions, and features, the website needs to be loaded and easily accessed across whichever platform that the user is browsing your website. Some of the factors that the mobile-friendly metrics defined are the user-friendly nature, readability, and navigation.
All the above factors have their responsibilities for making a website more mobile-friendly for your website visitor. Marketers have to determine by auditing the website and see for the possible scenario to improve it for mobile users.
Mobile friendly versions focus more on the visual appearance of a website on a mobile device. It creates an enjoyable experience for your audience because the content is easily navigated and found. And due to the text size and style, it is convenient for them to understand what the content is all about.
Why is it important to have a mobile-friendly website?
If we look at the perspective through the user browsing a website from a mobile device, you can easily spot the missing features for them to access on a website. This is the reason, several factors constitute for a website to be mobile-friendly. Here are some of the major reasons that you need to optimize your site.
1. Helps in readability
As you know, mobile devices are smaller in size when compared to a laptop or desktop. This is a reason you need to maintain the proper size of the fonts that have to be displayed on a mobile device. Additionally, you can also take the help of line spacing and the type of alignment that you want for a web page.
You need to see all the factors that make it convenient for the user to read the content from a mobile device. You can also break down the paragraph into smaller parts so that they don’t get distracted reading longer paragraph content.
2. Makes it visually appealing
When you optimize websites for mobile phones, it creates an engaging visual experience for the end-users. As you will be using various media files in the form of images and videos, it is important to optimize it so that it gets properly loaded on a mobile device.
This makes it more appealing for your audience to access the required content. They also don’t need to change any settings for accessing the media file from your website.
3. Ranking signal
Since Google has considered a website that is mobile friendly is better compared to other websites. Because the ranking is determined by how the website is beneficial for the audience. This is the reason Google used this metric as a ranking signal and has made it mandatory for every website to be more mobile-friendly.
You can also check the mobile-friendly audit feature from the Google search console. It lets you know which are the web pages that are facing any mobile-friendly issue and it also gives out possible solutions for you to fix them.
4. Loads the website faster
By optimizing the website for cell phone users, you can easily notice that the site tends to load faster than before. It can be due to multiple factors when you are optimizing the site to be more responsive across devices.
Web developers use multiple variations in eliminating the resources that are not required for a mobile user. It can be the animations or the media files that are consuming more load time and size.
5. Better user interface
All the visual elements are optimized so that it is easy for the end-user to access the website. Then it can be whether the user wants to engage with your website in a portrait or a landscape version.
This makes the user interface an engaging experience that allows you to retain your audience by creating a memorable experience.
6. Effective conversion
When your website is properly optimized for mobile phone devices, you can get the conversion same as you received for the desktop platform as well. If you look at the trends, on some of the segments you can see an audience that you get to your website is more from the mobile phone rather than the desktop. This is one of the major reasons that you need to properly optimize your site for mobile users.
There are several website owners who have seen better conversion rates after optimizing their website. You can also perform A/B testing or use analytics to track the performance of your activities.
7. Adapt to the trend
As you can notice that there are several search engine platforms making it mandatory for websites to be optimized for mobile users and the traffic received on a website is more from the mobile phone than the desktop device.
When you are not serious about optimizing the site as per the trends, it will be hard for you to see your expected outcomes from the website.
What makes a website to be mobile-friendly?
For a website to be mobile-friendly, it starts with how responsive the website is across devices. You need to test your website by using multiple variations in mobile phones and also cross-check with different types of web browsers. Because not only the type of mobile phone plays an important part, but the browsers that the end-users use will also be a key constraint in making a website more mobile friendly.
Secondly, you need to check how it is properly structured for your web visitors. You should see that it is not complicated for the users to access your content. Categorize all your content in the mobile menu that creates a hassle-free experience for them to get the information which they came for.
Thirdly, you need to see what is best for your mobile users. It can be the type of description length that you are using in heading tags or it can be using additional features like improving the readability and page performance that makes it more convenient for end-users. Choose the desired method and make the site mobile-friendly.
How does the non-mobile-friendly version of a website appear?
To spot a non-mobile-friendly website is very convenient. Because you will easily find a website that either has a tiny font or it is extremely large. This makes it hard to read and troublesome for the visitor to perceive the message.
You can also notice that the webpage and the media files don’t fit your mobile browser. You need to keep on zooming in and out in order to fit according to your screen.
Other factors can be the navigation structure, slow site page speed, unfunctional buttons, and link clickability. These all constitute and hamper the mobile-friendly experience for the audience.
To sum it up
From Google rankings to achieving better conversions, optimizing your website for being more mobile-friendly has become a mandatory approach. Since you have understood what is a mobile-friendly website and its importance, there are many benefits of optimizing your website for mobile users.
If you are not sure that your website is not properly optimized for mobile uses, there are many online tools from which you can perform a test.
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