Semalt: Designing Your Website For Mobile Devices 

You could keep a secret from everyone or everything, but your phone will be the most challenging thing to keep a secret from. Today, we've gotten so used to our phone some might call it a person. But whether a person or thing, the fact remains that we need our phones.  

They function as our go-to buddies, our friends, our entertainment, and our work. It's no surprise they have become a thing to be considered when designing websites. The internet is drastically changing, and the advances in mobile technology make them formidable computers.  

Today, users can access the internet on varieties of devices that were mere dreams ten years ago. Technology has so far advanced that wristwatches and our refrigerators can access the internet. This is why optimizing your website for mobile devices aren't a task you should overlook. The success of your business or website may very well depend on this. 

If the love for your viewers isn't enough motivation, Google has also rolled out its mobile-friendly algorithm that fishes out websites optimized for mobile devices. They add points to them, making them rank better on SERP.  

As far back as in 2013, mobile devices made up about 15% of all internet traffic. Today, however, mobile devices account for up to 55% of all internet traffic. This means that if your website isn't mobile-friendly, you're on the wrong side of 55%. That's more than half of all internet users. You wouldn't want that. This is why Semalt designs mobile user-friendly websites that ensure that your websites function adequately on laptops, computers, and mobile devices.  

Ways to Know If Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly? 

The first way to do this is by getting your website to Semalt. At Semalt, we will run a diagnosis and figure out how compactible your website is on mobile devices. This is besides the alternative of you visiting your website on your mobile device. 

Semalt uses Google's tools to check if your website is mobile-friendly in the eyes of google. Using tools such as Google Webmaster is important because these tools are provided by Google, so as long as they have the go sign on these tools, your website is great. Google Webmaster also points out the errors affecting your website, which makes it difficult to use on mobile devices. Once Semalt has figured out the problem, we can fix it and keep you and your business ahead of your competition.  

Mobile websites perform a unique job. They are tasked with delivering information to your prospective clients and visitors in a manner that is a slightly different manner than that on your laptops. Mobile devices will also react and respond to your website differently.

Steps on Making Your Website Mobile Friendly

Rather than doing this on your own, without the experience or a complete knowledge on how to get it done, professionals advise you to give Semalt. This is because Semalt offers website SEO services at an affordable rate and because Semalt cares about the success of your website and is dedicated to getting it on Google's first page. 

Semalt uses these steps in making your website mobile device friendly. 

Testing your website 

First, we fish out the problem—the first step in testing your website using Google's Mobile-Friendly Tool. Before we make any changes or corrections on your website, the smartest thing to do is to see how they behave on mobile devices. Before diving into your website, its best we figure out what is wrong. Doing this helps us decide on what needs to be done to improve your website. One way to do this is by using your website on different mobile devices by accessing the website on tablets, pads, and smartphones. This gives us a vivid representation of what your website will look like and feel like to your visitors.

Once we are done with this, we do a deeper dive using Google-specified dedicated testing tools. These tools will show us if your website meets the standard for mobile pages. 

Use a responsive WordPress theme.

Here, we begin to execute corrections. In choosing your WordPress theme, there are red tapes you should monitor. You should make sure that the theme you're going for is well optimized and won't negatively affect your website. Your WordPress also needs to be secure and provide you with customizable settings; you will need to beautify your website.  

However, it is usually common to overlook the responsiveness of the theme. More often than not, this goes unchecked. This feature is essential because it determines how your site will be rendered regardless of the type of screen displaying the website. Fortunately, most themes these days already come in a responsive form, but we still need to confirm this before we begin to use any theme for your website.

Use a reliable web host.

Picking the right web host is a critical part of the success of your website. The simple fact is that no matter how good your website is if your host or the hosting plan you're on doesn't offer the speed and resources you need, your website will perform poorly.  

Your host determines a lot about your website. This also includes the behavior of your website on mobile devices. A good host will ensure your website speed is even more important than usual. Selecting a host and a hosting plan that gives your website the speed it needs to be mobile-friendly.

With that in mind, Semalt discusses finding the best alternative to your current host and helping your website become faster, better, and improve its mobile-friendliness. However, if you need more from your web hosting service, you can opt for a dedicated server. This means you can use a server dedicated to your website. This will mean increased speed, security, and a customizable server, all of which are necessary elements in running a mobile-friendly website. 
 
Redesign your pop-ups for mobile devices

While pop-ups may be a bit intrusive, they remain one of the best methods of grabbing visitors' attention. As such, mobile sites should contain at least one or two of these strategies to increase visitors' conversion or to pass vital information.  

However, this can become a problem if your website isn't optimized for mobile devices. On smaller smartphones or tablets, these small pop-ups become huge and annoying to the visitor. They also end up covering most of the information displayed on the screen.

To optimize these pop-ups for mobile devices, Google recently launched some pop-up penalties. These rules serve as guidelines each pop up must follow to avoid frustrating users or to cover most of what visitors visit a site to see.

To avoid getting penalized, Semalt makes sure that: 
  • Pop-ups are as non-obstructive as possible.
  • Pop-ups can be closed quickly.
  • Pop-ups that contain necessary information such as login details, verification, etc. are exempted from these rules. 

Benefits Of Using A Mobile Optimized Website

  • Improved user experience: 
Have you ever been in a situation where you opened a link, and you were faced with words, images, and descriptions all mumbled up on your screen? This happened because that website wasn't optimized for mobile users. As a result, the user interface/ display got mumbled up as it forces itself to fit in the screen of the mobile device. This scenario most likely made you leave the website. If your website isn't optimized for mobile users, your website would only end up annoying the 55% of mobile internet users and make them leave your website as soon as it displays. Sadly, many websites aren't yet up to date on this idea. Reports have shown that about 60% of mobile users still encounter this problem when using a website.  Optimizing your website for mobile devices gives your users better satisfaction whenever they click on any of your pages. The most important tool in getting ranked on Google SERP is customer satisfaction. If your website satisfies your visitors, Google is happy with your website.
  • It increases the average time visitors spend on your website:
You need to understand that you're never short of competitors, so you need to impress your visitors as soon as you can as best you can. You have very little time to get visitors interested in your content. This is more important with mobile users because they are most likely on the go, in a hurry, or in desperate need of the information your website is to provide. If your site is easy to navigate and looks appealing, you win their views. This way, you stand a better chance of converting one time visitors into customers.
  • Faster website loading speed: 
To understand just how important fast internet speed is, click here. As previously mentioned, you hardly ever have enough time on the internet. Your website should be able to load quickly on mobile phones and computers. Having your website speed focused on only computer devices may prove harmful as mobile users easily tap the back icon and pick another website. Studies have backed up this point, saying that mobile users wait between 6-10 seconds to load webpages. So you need your websites to take at most 5 seconds before it loads on a mobile device to be safe.