Seems like everyone has a smart phone these days, which means more and more people are viewing websites on very tiny screens with a million finger smudges. If people look at your website, how does it look that small?
What is a mobile-friendly website?
A mobile-friendly website takes a normal website and simplifies it, or rather, it redesigns it so the width fits a mobile (small) screen. I’m a visual learner, so I’ll show you what I mean.
Here’s a snapshot of what my website looks like on a computer screen:
Here’s what it might look like on a mobile device:
That’s a whole lot of finger scrolling (ie, new smudges) for my mobile-device friends. Up, down, even sideways scrolling. For the casual reader, it’s too much work.
But there’s another option.
With a little effort on my part, I now have a mobile-friendly site:
The whole thing is formatted for the smaller screen, which makes a world of difference in scrolling. Plus, all my navigation is right where I need it.
Here’s another example, since I just did the same thing for my dad’s site.
How do you make a mobile-friendly website?
There are many ways. Many blogs themes have mobile-responsive themes (they’ll change depending on the device). Most web design platforms (including Wix, which is the one I use) also has options so you can design a mobile-friendly site.
The gist
Someone has probably researched how many people get their information on a hand-held device versus a computer screen now. It’s a lot. Maybe even you’re reading this post on a small, smudged screen. Cool. I hope the WordPress folks formatted it well for you.
(UPDATE 8/24/15: Google now ranks mobile-friendly websites higher in searches than non. So…yeah.)
We have the world at our fingertips — literally. We’ve become an impatient set of humans. People visiting our sites want information as fast as possible. If they don’t get it, they’ll shrug and leave. Let’s get them the information as easily as possible.
So…if you have a website, make sure you also have a mobile-friendly site.
So my amazing readers, have you gone mobile-friendly? If so, how did you do it? Anything I forgot to mention? Please share here.
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