So how do you check if your website is mobile friendly and Google ready?
Google have identified a number of steps to help with this preparation as well as tools to help you check your own site. I have summarised this information below.
Steps to make your website more mobile friendly
Use text with a font size readable without zooming. 16px is a good size used a lot in mobile friendly sites.
Size the content of your page so users don’t have to zoom in or scroll unnecessarily to read.
Place links in enough space that they are easily clickable and make buttons big enough to be able to click with a finger.
Avoid using software that is not supported on different platforms such as Flash.
Try to keep loading times for web pages to a minimum. Devices running on mobile phone networks are not as powerful as wireless networks. Users have a very short attention span and will leave your web page if it is not loaded quickly.
Make use of media queries in your stylesheets to help change the design for different screen sizes.
Useful resources to help you
Google have a tool you can use to test your website to see how mobile friendly it is: Google mobile site test tool
There are plenty of online guides to help you create mobile friendly sites. One of those is Google’s Mobile Friendly Websites Guide. Click on the Get Started button and you will be taken to a page with several easy to follow guides.
If you want to learn more yourself and get technical, there is a Web Fundamentals site from Google which takes you through some best practice guides. Includes links to help you upgrade your site if you are using a commercial CMS (such as WordPress or Joomla).
If you fancy getting down and dirty with code and are starting from scratch and want to build your own mobile friendly web page, I recommend you look at Bootstrap, it is one of the most popular free frameworks available to build responsive design web pages.
Building a website with mobile in mind is definitely something I recommend you do. It will create a site that is scalable and search engine friendly. However, it is not easy to create one solution for all and with more and more mobile devices appearing on the market (tablet, phone and now watch), things are forever changing and challenging!
Make sure you test your web pages on as many different devices as you can, remembering at all times who your intended audience is likely to be. Try to test on multiple platforms too, don’t just stick with one brand (such as Apple), performance and bugs can differ greatly between Android, iOS and Windows.
My aim of this blog was to remind you of the importance of being mobile friendly and to give you some tips on getting there. If you would like some more advice on anything you have read in this blog, you can contact me at thebestof Cambridge and sign your business up for a website review to help you identify and recommend any changes that may be required.
* = (statistics information taken from http://uk.businessinsider.com/google-mobilegeddon-2015-4?r=US)
