Why Your Website Should Be Mobile Friendly

With much of the recent talks about getting websites mobile friendly, it’s no wonder you or your small business may already be planning to join the mobile market space by adopting responsive design.

We’re entering an era when designing only for desktop and laptop screens no longer hold. You may be able to view your site beautifully using a tablet, but not when you own a tiny mobile device with its own limited screen space.

Hence, getting your website mobile-friendly and responsive is not a lofty ideal these days. By being mindful of your users, you achieve much more than giving them the best mobile web experience, you retain paying customers who’re crucial to your success.

And by going responsive design, you’ll be able to address a lot of crucial things, in terms of user experience and usability concerns for a variety of screen sizes. It’s also smart that you don’t need to develop a mobile friendly website and a native mobile app separately.

 

Some Reality Check

 

In the world today, we’re seeing that smartphones are becoming more and more accessible, internet speed’s getting blazing fast, and hardware makers unveiling new devices very so often.

All these combined, the obvious result is that users browsing your website through their smartphones and tablets than from personal computers are bound to increase. And shifting to mobile space is not only logical, it’s a must-do effort to custom-tailor the web experience to your mobile user customers.

A study conducted by Nielsen and NM Incite have shown the tremendous power of mobile. The same research showed that 63% of users time are spend accessing their mobile devices and apps to socialize with friends and social networks.

On the business side of things, an independent Google survey about what users want from mobile sites reveals that 67% of 1,088 smartphone users would prefer shopping over their mobile friendly websites than old-fashioned desktop-mode websites.

It also indicated that 61% of users surveyed would not hesitate to leave a site that’s not responsive for mobile browsing. And nowhere will these large percentages of users going anywhere wrong, aren’t they?

So, these surveys confirm our assumption – mobile friendly websites are in, cooler, and more feasible to ensure revenues.

 

What is a Mobile-Friendly Website?

 

 

At this point, some terms may be a bit confusing so we’re obliged to define some and correct some misconceptions. A mobile friendly website is different from mobile website. A native mobile application is another planet entirely unique from the two latter versions.

When you develop your website for mobile, this only takes mobile or tablet screens into consideration. Here’s where making your website mobile friendly starts, which entails developing a responsive mobile web design.

When you have a mobile friendly site, compatibility is not limited to mobile and tablet screen sizes. Responsive design approach screen resolutions of various types and sizes. The heightened level of responsiveness takes into account the inherent features of television and other non-mobile devices.

A native application requires an entirely different set of design and development for mobile. While it can be more elegantly designed or functional, however, it needs to be downloaded and installed to a mobile device. Some of these apps come with a price tag.

Here is where responsive design wins over building a native app and mobile version only feature. It takes no extra resources, cost and effort to design responsive or mobile friendly websites. Another good thing is that you get to focus only on what your customers want.

 

How to Make Your Website Friendly for Mobile Use?

 

Making this a reality would practically involve many different steps and approaches. In our experience here at 7th Media Design Studio, we have set a few guidelines to ensure that mobile-based projects are carried out pretty systematic and efficient.

Here are some of these guidelines:

1. Strive for Simplicity. Especially for mobile-based viewing, keeping your site simple can deliver user friendliness to the next level. This rule is golden even for desktop sites so keep your content to the minimum, cut the clutter and don’t over complicate the whole experience.

 

2. Be Concise. Just like keeping your site for mobile simple, being concise is keeping to the minimum the required actions from users. If you can reduce to two the swipes and taps, do so. If you can trim the excess fats to the user browsing your web, better make this your constant guide to achieve greatness.

 

3. Give a Laser Focus Eye on What’s Needed. Select carefully what features, functionality and navigation menus to include and remove. The basic guide is to always consider what your users would typically use your site for and what they’ll look and need. From that point, define what’s only needed in your particular business, and focus on these items. If some content are better left behind a desktop site and not a mobile friendly website, do so instantly.

 

4. Remove the Clutter. Keep in mind that the main reason your band of users will use your responsive design is the simplicity they can derived out of the experience. So just remove information that will overcrowd your one screen page. Don’t mess with uses and give them troublesome navigation or mediocre interface. Giving no pressure to your users’ browsing experience be your guide.

 

5. Think Mobile. When you consider you’re designing for mobile, everything else follows. Of course this has to be elaborated further. What I mean by this is simply knowing the medium or platform you’re designing for. By being mindful of the limitation of mobile devices (e.g., screen space, etc.), you get more discerning and careful what to place on your mobile page in order to strike an attractive and engaging interface. Avoid putting too many images or using buttons and spaces too large for mobile.

 

6. Be Instructive. Don’t assume that all users who’ll use your mobile will instantly be familiar with everything you offer or provide them. Be clear about what information you provide on your desktop and mobile web version. If certain content can only be accessed through your desktop platform, make sure to provide a link to the full version of your website.

 

7. Shorty rules. Requiring users to type too many text or input lengthy passages may not only annoy, but can completely disgust your users. In the mobile and tablet space, typing text that exceeds a tweet is perplexing, even by simply requiring users to fill out a form can be a form of painful sacrifice already. So reduce as much as possible the field that you’ll require your users to fill out. Every time you do so, you’re an inch closer to losing your users.

 

 

Final Thoughts

By following the above-mentioned steps when making your websites mobile-friendly, you’ll be closer to your dream of reaching out to your customers and engaging them more satisfactorily. Best of all, you’ll be as much likely to convert users to paying customers if you keep them empowered with the mobile web experience.