Improving Your Mobile Site
As of the first quarter of 2021, it was found that mobile devices accounted for 59 percent of organic search engine visits. We very much live in a world where access to information on-the-go is a must and Google acknowledges this with mobile-first indexing. So what does that mean for you as a brand? Well, Google uses the mobile version of your site to determine rankings, so it’s very much in your interest to perfect your mobile strategy.
Here are some top tips for improving your mobile site and the overall user experience.
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Make Sure Your Site is Responsive
When a website is responsive, the layout and content respond based on the size of screen they’re presented on. A responsive website automatically changes to fit the device you’re reading it on. Responsive design best practices include keeping the design minimalistic and easy to navigate. You should also make the layouts fluid and adaptive, taking into consideration the responsive breakpoints of various devices. Don’t forget that people will be viewing content in both landscape and portrait views too.
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Offer an Exceptional User Experience
If people come to your mobile site and get disrupted by intrusive ads and pop-ups, they’re likely to leave pretty quickly. So make sure these are blocked. Also, think about why people are coming to your site and what questions/pain points they might have. From there you can place the most valuable content at the top of the page with easy click-through buttons and strong calls-to-action. Always test your site making sure all links and buttons work.
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Improve Your Site Speed
The load speed of your mobile site is very much a ranking factor. Thanks to a new core algorithm update, Google now looks at three page speed metrics collectively known as Core Web Vitals. These have been added to other page experience signals that Google currently uses in their algorithms like mobile-friendliness, site security and avoiding excessive pop-ups. There are many ways you can improve download speeds such as compressing and optimising images, avoiding or minimising redirects, switching web servers, minimising HTTP requests and more. So keep an eye on speed and make effective changes.
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Use Structured Data
There’s a lot to think about when it comes to improving your mobile site, but it’s worth paying attention to structured data. This is a way of describing your website to make it easier for search engines to understand and is essential for every site. You need specific vocabulary to make this work and the big search engines use Schema.org. This provides a series of tags and properties to describe your products, reviews, local business listings, job postings and such like in detail.
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Improve Legibility
Your website should be easy to read on all devices including the smallest smartphones. Therefore be sure to test different fonts. The last thing you want to do is put off customers that have made it all the way to your site because your wording can’t be read. Also, keep an eye on your colour palette. Make sure that any text on a coloured background can be easily read and doesn’t blend in.
Contact Whitefish Marketing today for help with responsive mobile site optimisation as well as SEO, PPC and web design requirements.
