Nowadays, over 50% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, which means that you, as a website owner, have to consider having a workable mobile version of your website. Otherwise known as a responsive website, which is a design that responds to all device types.
Stats
If you’re not using a responsive theme for your website – you’re missing out on both SEO and traffic.
Do the math, if half of the internet traffic is on mobile and your site doesn’t look good on mobile, it’s very likely that 1 in every 2 people visiting your site will drop off.
Consider this: in 2018, Google officially announced that they’re implementing a mobile-first indexing mechanism. This means that mobile sites have priority over desktop websites when it comes to Search Engine Indexing (SEO).
If Google doesn’t like your site, the internet doesn’t like your site, it’s that simple.
Luckily, the majority of free and premium WordPress themes in the WordPress Theme Directory support responsive design, so it’s entirely possible you already have a proper mobile version of your website.
If you don’t – consider switching to a theme that supports a responsive mobile version. If you’re not sure if your site is responsive, you can test it with this Responsive Website Design Testing Tool.
Google mobile-friendly test
Additionally, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check your website and see if it’s mobile-friendly. This tool will specify sections of your website that take longer to load, so you can quickly fix the responsiveness problem.
Now that you have your mobile site, you need to optimize it properly, so it loads quickly for your visitors and boosts your search ranking.
Optimizing images
Image optimization is crucial for a solid mobile experience on your website. Images tell the story of your website, but if they’re not properly optimized they can slow down your site significantly.
The first tip is to stop using sliders if you have those on your site. Your website will load ten images in one slider, but the visitor only sees one at a time. Not good.
Images can help conversion rates if used in the right spots and sparingly but overused they slow down your website and become very distracting, so make sure to be mindful of that.
We can compress and optimize existing images manually by using services like TinyPNG, or we can use an automated solution like the Smush plugin.
We also recommend Lazy Loading images on your website, which means that the resource will only be loaded when the visitor scrolls down to that asset on the page, and not before. There are tons of plugins that can help you lazy load images, Lazy Load Optimizer is just one of many.
Don’t use full-screen pop-ups
Using call-to-action full-screen pop-ups is an excellent way to engage users on desktop, but can be very annoying to mobile users. If you have to use these on the desktop version of your website, make sure to add CSS/JavaScript code that will detect the user’s browser type and disable them for mobile users.
The Conditional Display for Mobile plugin is handy, it controls what mobile users see on the mobile version of your site.
Responsive theme
If you happen to use a theme that’s not responsive or you discovered you’re not after you built your website and can’t make the switch immediately – you can use a plugin that serves custom themes to mobile users as a workaround solution.
The WP Touch plugin will add a mobile-only theme to your site that is SEO optimized and passes all Google Mobile tests. You can customize the theme even with a free version, and you can upgrade to the Pro version if you want more control over your mobile site (which in reality, you should consider especially if you pull revenue from your site).
Mobile trends have been growing tremendously in past years, and they will only keep evolving, so it’s time to hop on the train and optimize your website for your mobile users!
