As more and more people are using their smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices to access the Internet, creating mobile-friendly websites should be the focus of every website owner.
If you’re looking to increase your sales you need to ensure your website is optimized for mobile, especially as more and more people are using their smartphones to not just conduct research and read reviews, but to actually purchase products. If you don’t, you will simply send your visitors to your competitor’s website.
There is, of course, a lot more to just having a mobile-friendly website. The user experience is key – you need to protect your brand’s image by ensuring that they don’t have a bad or negative experience on your website via their mobile phone. Otherwise they may not visit your site again. The ultimate goal should be to give your user a great experience as well as drive conversions.
When designing your mobile website, here are some of the most important things to consider:
- Keep an eye on your branding. If you are setting up your site, make sure to keep branding in mind. Here are brand name ideas to get you inspired.
- Study your analytics thoroughly in order to find out what your visitors are most interested in. When you create a mobile website you might have to strip it down to the basics, so knowing what your audience is most interested in can be of real help.
- Think of the priorities of a mobile user when visiting your site, as they can be quite different from desktop users. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get it right first time: you should be prepared to experiment and make changes until your mobile version converts better.
- Make sure your loading time is kept to a minimum. Most people are prepared to wait a few seconds for a page to load, but remember that every second counts.
- It might be obvious, but you should make sure that whenever someone enters your websites’ URL in their smartphone browser they are automatically redirected to the mobile version.
- If you use pop ups or ads consider how it can affect the user experience. It can be frustrating not being able to press the x button due to spacing not being far enough apart or if the close (x) button is too small for fingers!
It’s also useful to see how many people are accessing your website via mobile devices. To do this, visit your Google Analytics page and click on the “Mobile” tab under “Audience”.
The overview section will give you your total numbers, including tablet, and if you go to the devices section you will be able to see exactly which websites were viewed by your readers and on which devices they accessed them from.
So why doesn’t everyone have a mobile-friendly website? (This doesn’t mean that you need to have two website versions, one for desktops and one for mobile), but it is very important to at least make sure your website is optimised for make sure your website is optimised for mobile and that it loads quickly.
Although tablets and smartphones have pretty big screens now, they are still significantly smaller than desktop,s so it’s crucial that mobile users can easily find their way around on their smaller screens. It’s not hard to do, and there are plenty of great tools that you can use to create the perfect mobile website.
Today, most WordPress themes are mobile-friendly as standard. However, if your current theme isn’t, below are some useful plugins that you can add to ensure your website becomes mobile responsive quickly and easily:
1. WPTap
WPTap is a WordPress plugin that develops mobile themes and plugins that can convert your existing WordPress website into a mobile website easily. It’s very simple to use and has lots of useful features.
2. MobilePress
MobilePress is a plugin that will automatically generate a mobile version for WordPress website. It has a few custom themes to choose from as well as some other settings. It doesn’t allow for much in-depth customisations, but it’s still a very good tool.
3. Duda Mobile Website Builder
Duda offers a more complete service for those who want to easily convert their WordPress website to a mobile site. It will retain the basic look of your desktop website and has automatic redirection for mobile visitors. It’s also SEO-friendly, and there is no need for coding.
4. Responsive
Responsive is a WordPress theme that automatically adapts your website for mobile devices, as opposed to creating a separate website version.
5. WPtouch Pro 3
WPtouch Pro 3 has some beautiful themes to choose from to create a website with a responsive design that changes the layout depending on the device used to access the website.
Have you created a mobile version for your website? What tool or plugin did you use?
