It’s predicted that mobile devices will make up 68% of all internet traffic this year, so it’s well worth knowing how to make your pages more mobile friendly.
It’s a common misconception that a mobile friendly site is simply one that can be viewed on mobiles. However, this is not the case. Pretty much any site is viewable on most phones, but ensuring a page is mobile friendly is another matter.
What does mobile friendly mean?
A page is mobile friendly if it makes a site more accessible for someone on a mobile device. This includes ensuring content is fully functional on a phone, ensuring users don’t have to zoom to read content and making a page generally more navigable when using a finger.
How do I make my site mobile friendly?
- Select a mobile method and update your website code accordingly
- Ensure your content works on a phone
- Optimise your site for speed and mobile
Choosing a mobile method
A mobile method is how a site becomes mobile. The three main methods are:
Responsive design
When a site is coded to work on a screen of any size. This is Google’s recommended mobile method and is a strong choice because it requires no specialist skills to implement, can be introduced quickly in a number of ways and has no SEO downsides or extra steps.
The easiest way to make your site mobile friendly is by buying a theme or template. Responsive design themes come with a majority of mobile issues already fixed, making your life a lot simpler.
Dynamic serving
When the content someone sees varies depending on what size device they’re using. Dynamic serving has very particular use cases, suiting sites requiring specific features that vary hugely for mobile users.
Whilst dynamic is good because it creates a smaller file size and caters to more specific mobile content, it means your site requires at least two versions (mobile and desktop), needs technical help and has further steps that can affect SEO rankings if not done well. What’s more, implementing dynamic serving will cost you a lot more.
Mobile URLs
Pages made specifically for mobile users. If a web address has an m before it, you’re viewing a mobile URL. E.g – “m.website.com”. As with dynamic serving, mobile URLs have more specific purposes, being used for device specific pages like an “iPhone page” or “iPad page”. Generally mobile URLs are utilised by bigger companies with more design and tech resources.
The best thing about mobile URLs is that they allow you to target particular devices with better integration. However, this means that you require multiple versions of your site (iPhone, Microsoft Surface etc), you’ll need technical support and there are further steps that can affect your site’s ranking. Additionally, mobile URLs add the issues of requiring redirects which are slower on mobile networks and are also more expensive to create.
With more people using mobile than ever before, it’s important that you get your site as mobile friendly as possible with one of these methods.
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