Tips for optimising your site for mobile users

Mobile optimisation isn’t new – developers have worked on responsive sites or standalone phone versions for many years.

But over the last few, since Google rolled out mobile-first indexing, it’s become a bigger priority for many organisations.

And even if you were ahead of the curve with a mobile friendly site, don’t think you can rest easy.

Mobile browsing is only increasing and phones are now used for everything from clothes shopping to car selling.

Well over half of all online searches are via mobile – and that share is still growing exponentially.

If your site isn’t optimised for mobile users, you’re missing out on search visibility, traffic and of course, conversions.

These five tips to further optimise your site’s performance on mobile will help ensure you don’t get left behind.

Careful with plugins

We expect you don’t have a site that uses Flash, especially since Google stopped supporting it in Chrome and even Adobe themselves will soon follow suit.

But there are several other plugins that may be ok for desktop sites that won’t work with some mobile browsers and devices.

These include Silverlight and Java, so make sure your mobile friendly site isn’t reliant on problematic plugins.

Key content hierarchy

Where screen size is limited, you want your important content to display at 100 percent width if possible.

This will mean less reliance on multiple columns and more use of stacking and scrolling – which means getting your priorities right.

Left to right reading on a big screen laptop doesn’t apply here and people’s scrolling thumbs lose energy quickly.

Your key content on every page needs to be at the top, following a clear hierarchy and without burying any relevant calls-to-action.

Header and navigation

A lot of mobile optimisation is about simplifying things for the user – which may mean balancing unfussy design with ease of navigation.

You don’t want a page to be cluttered with signposting options but it should still be as easy as possible for users to complete an action.

This might include finding your most popular pages but also contacting you, making a purchase or just returning to the homepage.

And if you doubt how much difference the content of your header area and navigation can make, take a look at this previously published case study.

Speed is everything

Attention spans nowadays are shorter than this sentence.

If the HTML content of your pages isn’t ready in milliseconds – not seconds – your bounce rate will take a beating.

There are several page speed checking tools, including Google’s own Test my Site – which should give you an idea of where you stand.

An experienced SEO services company will be able to provide you the guidance needed to get up to speed.

Analyse and test

And test and test – every change you make to your mobile site, should be tested on various devices.

Use your Google Analytics to see which devices are used to visit your site, which browsers and which pages are your most popular on mobile.

This should inform any future developments and tests you design to further improve your site’s performance.

Want your site to perform better on mobile?

It’s more than likely your website sees almost twice as much mobile traffic as desktop.

We’ve talked briefly before about how not paying proper attention to mobile UX could be hurting your SEO.

But in raw terms, if your site isn’t correctly optimised for mobile, you could be missing out on huge numbers of enquiries and conversions.

Get in touch today, or if you know someone who might be interested, share this content and spread the love.