In this day and age, people are performing daily tasks online while they are on-the-go more than ever before. It is vital that you address the needs of your mobile customers, otherwise it is likely that you will lose business from this part of the market. Your website needs to be optimised for mobile. This means it has to be able to adapt to different sized devices such as tablets and smartphones, while still maintaining the quality of the user experience and information provided. Needs vary between mobile and desktop users, and these differences also need to be taken into consideration when optimising your website for mobile.
Here are 5 handy tips to help you make your site mobile-friendly.
1. Keep it simple
A mobile user is looking for quick and easy information through simple navigation. The first step is to determine the essential information you need to include by asking yourself what your mobile customers will be looking for. From here, plan your site layout and keep the number of pages to a minimum. It is also important to keep the navigation process as simple as possible by reducing the amount of unnecessary text, maintaining as much white space as possible, and eliminating any avoidable steps in the process.
2. Match the branding
Although your mobile site will be more streamlined than your main site, it is important to maintain your branding by ensuring that the brand elements from your main site are also part of your mobile site and the brand experience remains consistent.
3. Avoid Flash or Java
Not all devices support Flash or Java, so incorporating Flash or Java into your site will eliminate a substantial amount of users to your site.
4. Avoid pop-up windows
Navigating through multiple browser windows is far more difficult on a mobile device than a computer. Pop-up windows and automatic redirections also create slow loading times.
5. Give users a choice
When optimising for mobile, it is important to remember to use mobile redirects from your main site, to automatically switch to the mobile-friendly version if your user is searching from a mobile device. However, just as important is providing users with the option to access the full site should they require further information that hasn’t been included on the simplified mobile version.
These are just the basics. There a lot of other factors you should consider regarding the design and functionality of your site with regards to making it mobile-friendly. For example, you may want to consider making your site responsive so that your site is completely flexible regardless of the device your user is on. Rather than detecting a specific broswer or device type, the website automatically adapts based on the screen size of the device.
Talk to our web design team today on 1300 855 651 about the options available for making your website mobile-friendly.