Today more and more firms are asking their web design company in Denver to make their website mobile-friendly. This trend comes more from necessity than preference. Today, there are more smartphone users than there are computer users. This means that more people use their smartphones to access the internet than they use desktops. Search engines like Google recognized this fact and updated their algorithms to score sites based on mobile-friendliness. Mobile-friendliness is not limited to the browser’s ability to open the link on a smartphone, the site’s element must be adjusted to the phone screen to give users a better experience. There are many ways to adapt a website to be mobile-friendly, some of which include the following:
Test Mobile Friendliness
Before developing solutions for any problem, it is important to understand the root of the problem. Mobile-friendliness of a website can be checked with many tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. These tools can analyze how well the webpages work on mobile devices and what needs to be corrected.
Develop Responsive Web Design
As the name suggests, responsive web design is a design that adjusts to the screen size of the device the user opens the link in. It is developed using CSS grids that rearrange themselves based on the screen size. The same link can be opened on mobile, tabs and desktops. This style is popular for this simple reason. With this design, a web designer does not have to develop a separate design for mobile. This saves the clients a lot of money and web design company in Denver a lot of time. It also simplifies the process of updating content as website owners don’t need to update two separate sites.
Compress Content
The size of the webpage content directly impacts its loading speed. Large file sizes take longer to load online. This is inconvenient for smartphones especially when the mobile data rather than wifi is turned on. According to studies, a site that takes more than 5 seconds risks a bounce rate of 90 percent. Compressing images, video and other content can improve the loading speed by a few seconds which matters a lot in the long run.
Use Big Buttons
Small buttons aren’t an issue on desktop screens where the pointer is small enough to fit them. However, small buttons are very inconvenient for smartphone screens as people need to use their fingers to click. It becomes even more inconvenient if multiple buttons are placed next to each other. It’s recommended to use large buttons, at least 26 pixels long and wide to match the size of the area covered by fingertips.
Use Large Fonts
Legibility is another issue with mobile screens. If the text is too small, readers will have issues reading it and are more likely to exit the page. To give a better UX, it’s best to use fonts sized 14 pixels.
Use Percentage Dimensions
The sizes of various elements of a website can be defined in either pixels or percentages. An element defined as 50 percent will occupy only 50 percent of the screen size. Percentage based dimensions are ideal for mobile screens as they automatically adjust the CSS grids to the screen size. With this, side scrolls become obsolete.
Use Viewport Meta Tag
A viewport meta tag is another simple method to adjust the webpage to the screen’s dimensions. With this tag, users don’t need a side scroll, unlike cases where the site opens with desktop scrolling.
Don’t Use Flash
Flash is not supported by most mobile operating systems. It slows downloading speed even on desktops. This is why other compatible systems like HTML are preferred by designers. There are other alternatives to Flash that work just as well. For complicated features on mobile, apps can be developed.
Simplify Menus
Desktop menus come with many options and by extension buttons. This does not translate well on mobile screens where users need to zoom in and scroll to tap the correct menu. This can be simplified by reducing the number of options on the menu or developing a sidebar.
These are just some adjustments that need to be made to create a mobile-friendly website.
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