According to a survey conducted by GlobalWebIndex, about 80 percent of adult Internet users own a smartphone, and 75 percent of smartphone users are using their phones to access mobile Internet services.
As such, if your business website is not optimized for mobile, you may be missing out on a great opportunity to expand your customer base and increase your revenue.
Here are a number of things that you can do to enhance the mobile-friendliness of your website….
Go the Mobile Friendly Route
Think with Your Thumb
Your website should be completely navigable with just one thumb, without the need to pinch or stretch the screen.
This is an important tip for improving your mobile website, because you want your mobile visitors to be able to navigate your website with one hand.
Also, if they have to pinch the screen, the content on your site is probably too small or not properly optimized for their devices. Since most of your mobile visitors will be using a touch-screen, all the buttons in your website should be big enough for larger fingers.
Mobile-Optimize Every Web Page
According to an article entitled “Is Your Site as Mobile-Friendly as It Needs to Be?”, website owners who want to achieve higher search engine rankings have to make sure that every page on their websites meets Google’s new ranking criteria.
Google has recently updated its algorithms to favor sites that perform and look better on mobile devices, and it will assess every page on your website. Pages that meet the new standards will be ranked higher in search results, while those that do not will be demoted.
The new algorithm can reduce the visibility of some of the pages in your website, so you should try to mobile-optimize your entire site.
Caching and Code Optimization
A good caching plan can significantly improve the mobile-friendliness of any WordPress or Joomla website.
Caching can increase your website’s loading time and efficiency by storing frequently requested information and feeding it out to your mobile visitors.
Different types of content on a web page, such as text and images, can be cached and accessed more easily than if they have to be located and extracted by the server with each page load.
Another effective way to mobile-optimize your website and improve page load times is to compress elements such as Javascript and CSS. This task can be performed using one of the many compression tools available in the market.
Use Geolocation
Geolocation is one of the mobile capabilities that can help you attract and convert more customers.
You can use geolocation to provide directions, enable customers to check in-store availability at nearby stores, offer targeted promotions, display prices in foreign currencies and connect to social media websites.
As mobile devices continue to gain popularity, it is becoming increasingly essential for businesses to mobile-optimize their websites.
The tips above can help you harness the power of mobile to gain a competitive edge.
About the Author: John McMalcolm is a freelance writer who writes on a wide range of subjects, from social media marketing to Cloud computing.
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