Having an overly mobile-friendly website is an absolute must these days (which is something of an oxymoron, I know). Google has been making mobile adjustments for several years now, and the announcement that the Mobile-First Index is in full affect this year is one of their latest algorithm updates.
What is the best strategy for ultimate website success? Have a site that is mobile responsive, mobile-friendly, and whatever else you need to do for mobile (don’t worry, I’ll get into specifics real quick below). This isn’t all about appeasing Google either. Mobile searches overtook desktop searches, meaning a mobile-friendly site can generate more leads and sales.
Making your website mobile-ready may seem a bit challenging, especially with all the other things you need to do for your business. However, it doesn’t have to be. Let’s take a deeper look at a few mobile must-haves you can employ to increase your mobile reach and visibility.
Use Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a mobile-friendly hack that is a must to grow your business’ mobile success. What is AMP exactly? AMP optimizes your content and speeds up your website, which increases mobile page load time significantly.
And speeding up page load time is a mobile must-have. “Today’s users expect significantly faster loading times, and your site needs to live up to those expectations,” website hosting provider DreamHost explained.
Mobile Device Navigation Is Vital
One of the biggest changes a user will notice between mobile and desktop is navigation. Navigation is important on mobile, since the way a user interacts with a site is different. It is essentially more physical, with scrolling and tapping, with website design elements involved.
This makes navigation important on mobile devices. Your website needs to be clean, concise, and easy to scroll and understand. One way to provide strong navigation is to use Call to Action (CTA) buttons.
CTAs help your site visitors see what steps to take to find more information about your brand, products, and/or services. It leads them on a buyer journey toward one thing — a conversion.
“Every action step that your customers will ever take on your web page is embedded inside the CTA button,” Neil Patel noted. “That’s why you need to make it look clickable and not be overpowered by other components of your website including the cover photo or too many text links.”
Be Mobile Responsive
Next up is mobile responsiveness. This may seem like an obvious one, but with so many mobile tactics thrown around online, this old mobile hack may be overlooked. When you choose a theme to begin developing a website, or if your site doesn’t quite look right on mobile, you should check if the theme is mobile responsive.
Having a mobile responsive website allows your site to adjust to different mobile device screen sizes. It is essentially the core of becoming more mobile-friendly. That’s simply because the mobile experience is the true user experience.
Know What Meta-Tags Are
You may not be too familiar with meta-tags are, but you should spend some time to get to know them, since they are an important mobile must-have. Viewport meta-tags provide your target audience with a stellar and saleable user experience, especially on mobile.
“To mitigate this problem, Apple introduced the ‘viewport meta tag’ in Safari iOS to let web developers control the viewport’s size and scale,” Mozilla developers explained. “Many other mobile browsers now support this tag, although it is not part of any web standard.”
It is kind of like mobile responsive design, but with a little boost. Viewport meta-tags give responsiveness a little boost, letting browsers scale a site easier. This is what enhances the user experience.
Get The Most Out Of Images
Images and other visual content are must-have assets that increase engagement, thus helping businesses rank higher in Google SERPs. However, using images and other types of visual content the wrong way can slow your site to a crawl.
If you don’t compress your images, your page load time will decrease significantly. Another image hack is to ensure they are high-resolution images. Why is this important?
Mobile devices are innovative pieces of handheld tech that show users every little image detail. If an image is poor, users will know, and may not trust your business.
In Conclusion . . .
Implementing the above mobile must-haves can be your starting point for making your business’ website a powerful platform providing stellar mobile user experience. There are more mobile hacks to employ as well, but start with these and you will be on your way to ultimate mobile success. Is your site mobile-ready?
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