How Mobile Friendly Is Your Design? 12 Tips to Follow

Mobile Friendly

Though smartphones and tablets have been around for less than 10 years, mobile Internet access has already caught up with desktop access. More Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.

Google has been talking of this trend for a while now, and recently made changes to their search algorithm, to boosts the rank of mobile friendly websites in search results and penalize sites that are not mobile friendly. Commonly called "Mobilegaddon", many sites saw their rankings drop significantly on mobile after these changes, and countless others are scrambling to make their sites mobile friendly. Yet, we continue to have websites that just don't work well on Mobile. Even new websites.

Search engine optimization isn't just the domain of Internet marketers. Website design and its implementation has an impact on search engine results.

As designers and developers, we need to take a step back and evaluate our work. The websites we create can't just look pretty. They need to serve the needs of the user and generate revenues for our clients. Don't leave the "mobile-friendly" test to the end of your design. Incorporate it into the design and development.

To help you out, here's a shortlist of the top questions you should ask to better understand how mobile-friendly your site is.

1. Does it display well on different devices?

2. How easily can mobile users complete common tasks?

3. Is your Call to Action central and prominent?

4. Do you have deep multi-level menus?

5. How easy is it to return to your home page?

6. Is it easy to search on your site?

7. Are your forms suitable for virtual keyboards?

8. No pinch-zoom. Other than product images.

9. Is your entire site crawlable?

10. Does all your content play on mobile devices?

11. Have you cross checked your redirects and cross links?

12. How do you handle complex tasks and sensitive information?

How does your website fare against these criteria? Are you making a conscious effort to keep things easy for mobile users?


Source : Richa Jain is a savvy technology writer covering the intersection of technology, business and life. Her writing draws from over a decade of industry experience developing cutting edge software. Through her digital content agency, TeakniMedia, she helps technology based businesses engage better with their users. Reach out to her over Email, Skype (richajn), LinkedIn or Google+.