You have a great website. It gets decent traffic. The design is attractive. Your readers like the content. But somehow you fail to gain as much traction as some of your competitors and while decent traffic is good, you are still hoping to get more eyeballs on your website. So what could be going wrong? One possibility is that your website is not mobile friendly.
There are lots of things actually that may be keeping you from getting enough momentum. Today we are going to look at one of these reasons – The level of mobile-friendliness that your website achieves.
“But my website is already mobile friendly!”
Yes, yes. We are sure that you would have already implemented responsiveness for different screen sizes. But let’s deep dive into mobile-friendliness and find out where you may be getting it wrong and talk about ways in which your website could become more mobile friendly.
Aesthetics
The first thing most people notice about a website is how it looks. A mobile user will be seeing the website on a smaller screen so here are a few things to consider:
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Fonts
I’ve noticed that some bloggers who are really popular in their niche continue to use fonts that make it difficult for users to read their posts on a mobile unless they zoom in. This reduces attractiveness and it can be a reason why some of your visitors may end up moving to a competitor’s blog.
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Theme
Responsive themes are a must. But that is not it. Some themes are designed to look good on both mobiles and desktop. Others may look great for desktop users but may be able to capture the interests of mobile users. How nicely your website’s theme displays on the mobile will play a role in determining the bounce rate for mobile phone users too.
Under the Hood
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Optimize for Touchscreens
Not just the basic elements, but deep inside too. I have visited a few websites which are optimized for touch until I began to look at some photos in a slideshow and it wouldn’t let me proceed because it wasn’t touch-friendly. These experiences are like loose strings hanging from a pretty dress – they never create a good impression.
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Boost Loading Speeds
This is another factor that reduces bounce rates and helps you improve the user experience. There are a couple of plugins that can help you with the loading speeds (we will talk about it in a moment). If you are all about rich graphics and lots of photos then consider a good plugin to help your website load quickly on mobiles.
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Responsive menus
Keep all menus on your website responsive and make sure that when they adapt to different screen sizes, they are easily usable. As always, the best way to know this is to try it out. If the menu shrinks to an extent where it is difficult for users to click on each item on the menu then you must reconsider.
Apps That Can Help
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Superfly
This plugin makes navigation easier for your smartphone users. It complements a responsive theme helping WordPress website owners achieve complete responsiveness. There are lots of ways in which this plugin makes navigation simpler and helps you personalize your website on a different level.
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AMP
Short for Accelerated Mobile Pages, this is a great plugin to help your mobile sites load faster. How does it work?
The plugin strips away the flashiness of your website and presents it to your mobile users in a very basic form. It works brilliantly for websites with lots of content which take relatively longer to load.
It is known that integrating AMP into your WordPress website will also help your Search Engine Rankings. Now that seems like real motivation! If you are struggling with Search Engine rankings, however, then you may have to consider other factors too. Hopinfirst is a firm that specializes in this.
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WP Touch
WP Touch is another plugin that makes your website more mobile-friendly. Once you have installed this plugin, you will be able to pick any theme and Google will see it as a mobile-friendly theme.
Bonus Tips
- Take the mobile-friendly test using Google’s testing tool. This will help you determine how easy it is for your audience to use the website on a mobile device.
- Use push notifications to increase user engagement and improve the user experience. Make sure that the notifications do not get too intrusive. Mobile users find push notifications to be easy and helpful reminders. This can have a positive impact on your audience.
- If you are using pop-ups on your website then try to avoid them on mobile phones or make sure they are optimized for mobile users. Some pop-ups are hard to dismiss when they show up on mobile.
Author Bio: James Tredwell is a Technical SEO at Hopinfirst.com who works with unique problems and advanced search situations. He helps clients improve organic traffic through a deep understanding of Google’s algorithm and Web technology.