Reasons to Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
In our previous article on responsive web design we explained why being mobile-friendly is important for your platform. Now, we will look at one more reason why your webpage must look awesome on a smartphone.
Reasons to make your website Mobile-Friendly
What’s the key to success in mobile marketing today? When it comes to building a reputation online, having a mobile-friendly website is one of the ways you can be perceived positively and improve your web page traffic. People like it, Google’s algorithms like it, and overall it just makes you a more respectable entity.
In 2014 Google started labeling sites as mobile-friendly to show users which pages are optimized for phones. Since 2015 Google Search has been using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This means that the more friendly to smartphone users your web page is, the higher it will be in search results ranking.
What You Should Decide First
You must define two fundamental things before you get your first users onboard:
- how to check whether your site is mobile-friendly.
- how to make your website mobile-friendly.
So, let’s start with the first one. Google has certain criteria which your page should meet:
- A lot of videos just aren’t playable on smartphones, therefore Google recommends using HTML5 standard tags to include videos and avoid Flash, as it is not supported by all mobile devices.
- Users must be able to read content effortlessly; this means no zooming and no horizontal scrolling.
- Every link on your website must be easily tapped, so place them far enough apart.
- You can also use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. Applying it you can see how Google Search sees your pages.
After you check if your site is mobile-friendly, you should take into account all things that don’t match Google’s requirements.
How to make mobile-friendly website?
Responsive design is a key. Google recommends using it over other design patterns. Responsive design allows you to maintain one version of your site instead of two, because the page has the same code and URL and adjusts according to the screen size, no matter what device you use.
The main reason why the user clicks on a link leading to your platform because he wants to complete a specific task. That’s why your website interface should be simple and direct. To make a great mobile-friendly site requires having a high level of skills and extensive experience.
All things considered, the goal of the most popular search engine is to help their users find even more pages that are relevant, high quality and optimized for mobile devices. If your website doesn’t meet all Google’s requirements, it can penalize your non-responsive site.
If you’re confused and not sure where to start, the Drudesk team would be happy to perform an audit for your resource. We know website development in and out. Our audits offer a comprehensive review and we’ll provide a roadmap of ideas and recommendations on what to implement first. Get a mobile website with Drudesk!