How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile

In today’s digital landscape, optimizing your website for mobile devices is no longer a luxury but a necessity. With an increasing number of users accessing the web through their mobile devices, search engines like Google prioritize mobile-friendly sites to provide the best user experience.

In this blog post, we will explore the importance of mobile optimization for your website and discuss essential tools and strategies to ensure that your site not only meets Google’s standards but also delivers a seamless and user-friendly experience on mobile devices. From analyzing page speed to addressing usability issues, let’s dive into the world of mobile optimization and discover how it can significantly impact your site’s visibility and success in the online realm.

Using Pagespeed Insights for Mobile Optimization

First, we often start with PageSpeed Insights, a tool from Google (https://pagespeed.web.dev/). This tool provides an overall score for your site from Google’s perspective. It’s beneficial to use this tool because if Google’s own tools are finding issues, it reflects what Google thinks you should fix.

Mobile issues can vary, including site speed problems (slow loading on mobile) and usability issues. For instance, if your site resizes for a mobile browser and the buttons become too small, PageSpeed Insights can flag this as a usability issue since it would be difficult for users to interact with your site.

Similarly, if the buttons on your site “shift” as the page loads, it becomes a usability issue. People loading your site might try to click a button, only to have it move away as they click. An example of this is websites with numerous ads where clicking a button triggers an ad to pop up, shifting the intended click location and causing accidental ad clicks.

Google Search Console and Mobile

Another useful tool we utilize is Google Search Console, which detects mobile usability errors. The advantage of Google Search Console is that it continuously monitors your site for issues and reports on any indexed page by Google. On the other hand, PageSpeed Insights only checks the specific page you provide.

Why Mobile Optimization is Important on Your Website

Why does all of this matter?

It is essential because Google aims to provide users with the best information, which includes both high-quality content (providing the best answer to the user’s query) and a user-friendly experience.

If a site is difficult to use on mobile, Google will prioritize other search results for mobile users. It is not uncommon to see different search results on desktop and mobile due to this reason.

Moreover, Google often labels sites as mobile-friendly or not. If Google doesn’t consider your site mobile-friendly, even if your SEO is excellent and you achieve great results on desktop, your mobile results may suffer.

Furthermore, in 2022, approximately 50% of B2B inquiries were made on mobile. Without a mobile-first strategy for your website, you could be losing half of your potential traffic because Google won’t prioritize your site in mobile search results.

Lastly, it’s crucial to note that we have only discussed factors that impact search results on platforms like Google. Even if you manage to deceive Google into believing you have a great mobile experience, if users think otherwise, they won’t waste time on your site.

For example, if your site loads slowly or has intrusive pop-ups, even if Google doesn’t penalize you for these issues, you might still have usability problems. If your site is hard to navigate or frustrating to use, users will likely leave quickly.

Steps to Optimize Your Mobile Website

There are several ways to address these issues.  Some recommended solutions include:

1. Regularly monitor your PageSpeed Insight scores for pages on your site that receive the most traffic.
2. Ensure that Google Search Console is set up on your site and regularly monitor mobile-friendliness issues.
3. Install Google Analytics to examine key performance indicators (KPIs) such as bounce rate and time on site. Compare this data against the device type and look for trends. For example, if the bounce rate is 80% on mobile but only 40% on desktop, investigate why more people are leaving your site on mobile.
4. Utilize third-party tools like BrowserStack to view your site on various devices. Alternatively, become familiar with free tools like Chrome’s developer tools, which enable you to view your site in “developer” mode using different screen sizes. This allows you to see how your site appears on different versions of iPhones, Android phones, etc.
5. Consider different strategies for key components of your site, such as adaptive versus reactive approaches to web design.

Regarding the last point above, most modern sites are built using a “reactive” approach to web design. This means that as the browser window size changes, the page layout adjusts to accommodate the screen size. For instance, a page might have a 3-column layout on a larger screen but change to a 2-column or 1-column layout as the screen size decreases.

An adaptive approach involves deliberately altering the user interface (UI) to provide a different experience based on the device. A common example of this is the “hamburger” menu frequently seen in mobile experiences. For instance, a website might display a navigation menu across the top of the page on desktop but compress it into a “hamburger” menu on mobile. You can observe this on the Caffeine Interactive website.