Best Practices for Mobile Optimisation

Introduction

Mobile optimization refers to the entire process involved in providing a seamless, interactive and user-friendly experience as users access your website using a mobile device. Most websites are accessed through a mobile phone compared to other internet-enabled devices. This means you run the risk of a high bounce rate, reduced traffic and a fall from Google’s search result pages.

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Since Google’s release of the mobile-first guidelines, stating that the mobile versions of websites will be given precedence when it comes to indexing, mobile optimization has become imperative. This policy has stayed relevant because mobile websites pull in the most traffic as people browse the internet more with mobile phones. Keep reading this article for more details on mobile optimization best practices.

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Mobile Optimization has gained so much traction amongst businesses and their web developers or SEO specialists because the mobile phone is the primary source of web surfing. Websites without optimization stand the risk of misplaced marketing efforts. Also, during the process of optimizing, evaluation of the user experience from a mobile user’s perspective, evaluation of all online touchpoints is important to ensure a smooth and seamless experience.

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What Practices Are Best For Mobile Optimization

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Vet Your Website Using Google Mobile-Friendly Tool

This should be the first move you set out to make. The Google Mobile-Friendly Tool gives you an assessment of the mobile-friendliness of your website. This helps with identifying specific areas on your website that need a touch up or more work done, and the tool provides actionable information on how to make the improvements.

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Test out your website by loading it on devices with different breakpoints. Breakpoints refer to the different points the website breaks into different resolutions to fit different screen sizes. Load onto your website with your mobile phone or tablet and vet how it feels to use. This gives you some idea of what the design of the website looks like, the website’s loading times, how easy the website’s navigation is to use etc. The Google Mobile-Friendly tool provides these details in an easy to understand interface and format.

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Optimize all content “Above The Fold”

Your mobile-friendly website design  must contain some more text above the fold compared to the desktop version. This encourages your website visitors to continue scrolling through the page to the next section to find what they need. 

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Make Forms Mobile-Friendly

You've probably experienced the frustration of filling out numerous forms if you've ever done any online shopping on your phone. Even though typing on a mobile device is in a really great place, it's still not flawless. Even with its heavy reliance on autocorrect, it may still be rather thumb-taxing. The takeaway here is simple: Long forms necessitate a lot of typing. Typing on a mobile device is annoying. Long forms are not optimized for mobile devices.

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If you want to try to reduce the negative impact mobile may be having on your conversion rates, reduce the number of form fields users are required to fill. This reduces their perceived workload and smothens their buyer’s journey.

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Optimize Your Files Size For Mobile

If you’ve done major optimization on your desktop website, you’d know how important optimizing the sizes of your website images is. Heavy files drastically affect page load times which go on to affect user experience and your page’s ranking chances. This effect intensifies with mobile phone technology as users have a lower attention span, meaning a slow loading website takes them off immediately. Connections on mobile devices are also not as veritable as in desktops. All of these just go to tell you that if your page loads slower than it should, users will not stick around to see it finish.

Minimize your images using sites like “TinyJPG” or “Export for Web” from Photoshop. Use these tools to minimize your image file size before site upload. Reduce the quality a bit and work on the resolution.

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Do not Use Interstitials

Every brand is passionate about their product and expects it to be the best. However, if a customer logs on your website to research before making a purchase, do not display an invasive ad that interrupts their browsing. This can upset the user during the sale or interfere with their overall experience on your site. 

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Keep interstitials to a minimum. Interstitials are ads that show up as you load a website or make a download. Ads should be placed at the bottom or side of the page. Give website visitors the choice to click on the ad and close it. Furthermore, you should be aware that Google penalizes intrusive interstitials. To avoid problems, consult their development guides and webmaster guidelines. 

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Verify for web development errors.

Determine your website's weak points. These flaws do not only trickle down to affecting your site speed. They also can be related to challenges with implementation on various platforms and displays. It is unacceptable if the customer discovers implementation concerns at the end of the project that you should have identified during development. You can correct these errors yourself or reach out to us.

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Use Structured Data On Your Website

Schema Markup helps Google identify pages with unique, structured information on a website. There are numerous schema tags to choose from and mark the content on your webpages. Webpages with schema markup have increased chances at being interpreted more clearly by Google and appearing higher up in the search results.

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Structured data helps Google convert information on your website to rich snippet which are common in Google’s mobile search results. Also, dependency on whether or not the mobile version of a web-page has schema data increases as the mobile index is tapped into.

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Conclusion

If your website is yet to rake in larger traffic, checking your mobile optimization might point you in the right direction. The world we live in is largely mobile-first. Most people that are going to access your website will do so from their mobile devices than from a desktop device. Ensuring that you carefully examine how your website operates on smaller screens is imperative. Optimize your website, make sure it is easy to use on mobile devices and avoid getting penalized on search engines.

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