How to Make a Website Mobile Friendly: A Complete Guide

Mobile devices are everywhere, and there is a simple reason behind it. Phones and tablets allow us to access the entire Internet wherever we are. In fact, on average we spend 57% of our time online on such devices. And yet for many website owners building a mobile friendly website is either a struggle or a low priority.

Why is that? Most likely because they are unaware of what contributes to poor mobile experience, or its effects on traffic. Being oblivious to those aspects of website managing creates a significant risk of losing visitors, and for businesses – lost sales. In this post, we would like to guide you on how to make a website mobile friendly, and share the best mobile website design practices to follow.

Use responsive web design (RWD)

Responsive websites are made with this meta tag:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

Note that sites built with IKOL have the abovementioned meta tag added by default.

Additionally, the rules width: 100% and height: auto ensure the responsiveness of your images. Alternatively, you can use max-width: 100%, if you’d like for the images to not scale over their original size.

Responsive web design lets websites automatically adapt to all devices, making it the most versatile option. It allows for a website to render appropriately on any window or screen sizes through fluid grids, responsive images, and CSS3 media queries.

This approach clearly wins over other web design types:

• Fixed - layout does not change at all; relic from times before smartphones
• Fluid - page as a whole can be adjusted, but its elements could be disproportionate
• Adaptive - requires creating preset designs for different screen sizes

Our research has revealed that over 94% of business websites use responsive design. This number may suggest that most businesses are already well equipped to present themselves across various devices. However, 65% of RWD sites were found to not have well-optimized responsive images, making them oversized or causing overlap with other elements.

Make the navigation easy on small screens

With limited screen space, you must ensure that all navigational buttons are accessible, large, and separated enough. This doesn’t only make them more readable, but also helps visitors avoid unintentionally tapping on any adjacent elements.

Most intuitive solutions generally limit the quantity of interactable elements appearing at once. Check if it’s necessary for all of the positions in the navbar to display all at once. Aim for minimalism and content organization, which can be achieved through hamburger menus or collapsed navbars. Optionally, consider sticky bars, which keep the most important links visible to users as they scroll.

A true mobile friendly website grants browsing experience that matches desktop as closely as possible. Naturally, tapping and swiping with fingers isn’t quite as precise as using a computer mouse. That’s why a good mobile website design considers such limitations, and doesn’t leave visitors guessing if they selected the page or option they wanted.

Keep all text readable

Text readability depends on factors such as font size, style, hue or background coloring. Mobile friendly websites set the base font size to at least 16px, while making it the same as on desktop. In fact, some web designers make it slightly larger on mobile, because smaller screens and content stacked vertically can create an illusion of text on mobile being tiny in comparison.

For hues, you need to follow the WCAG guideline, which currently defines the minimum contrast at Level AA as follows:

The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

In other words, the text color must be at least 4.5 times lighter or darker than the background. Large-scale text is an exception from this rule, as it must have a contrast ratio of 3:1 instead. Keep in mind that the brightness in this case is determined by relative luminance, and not the HSB values.

Readable text ensures that your website is accessible to everyone, including people with vision or cognitive disabilities.

Take care of mobile performance

To improve your website’s mobile performance, check for any images that can be compressed and have their weight reduced. Consider using WebP format for your graphics, and applying lazy loading, which makes them load only when they’re about to be displayed on your site. Reducing the amount of CSS and JavaScript files, as well as enabling browser caching, also positively affect the performance and make your website more mobile friendly.

Visitors appreciate websites that do not waste their time and let them access any page in an instant. On top of that, fast loading sites are often rewarded with a higher ranking on search engines, which detect if users stay for longer. And sites with good mobile performance are more likely to keep their bounce rate low.

Do not rely on mobile users’ patience – 53% of them leave sites that take more than just 3 seconds to load. The additional challenge may come from the fact that webpages on average take nearly twice as long to load on mobile than on desktop. This is caused by:

• Less stable networks
• Weaker processors
• Energy-saving measures
• Websites loading different layouts and resources

To learn more about website performance, feel free to check our article on that exact topic.

Be careful around pop-ups

If you need to include pop-ups on your website, make sure that they are easy to dismiss, and that they don’t show up while the user is actively browsing through.

Pop-ups are commonly seen as irritating and intrusive. Although they can be useful for promoting offers or capturing leads, they’re more likely to cause disruptions on mobile due to several contributing factors.

First, remember that scrolling through a website with fingers means that mobile users will have their screens partially covered. It means that a poorly timed pop-up can make the user tap something they didn’t mean to before they even realize it.

Then there’s the matter of actually closing them, which often becomes unnecessarily difficult. At some point you might have seen a website with a pop-up containing the ‘X’ button that’s too small to accurately tap, or difficult to find due to low contrast. Combined with covering the screen or blocking the navigation, they perfectly match the definition of an intrusive site element.

Use mobile friendly forms

In your forms ask only for the most important information you would need for capturing a lead. Many websites stick to the minimum: name, email, and message fields are often considered sufficient for contact.

With that said, it’s still entirely possible to make more extensive forms work. For instance, a field for phone number can be included, but you should ensure that it has an appropriate input type set and triggers a numeric keyboard. An inquiry type field is another possible addition, which can be made more convenient with dropdown menus allowing the user to pick from multiple options.

Last but not least, remember to make it easy to switch between fields. Similarly to the buttons on your website, each field should be large enough, separated from other elements, and easy to tap.

Forms should be generally kept as short as possible. As a website owner you need to consider that some users aren’t proficient in mobile typing and may find forms cumbersome.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to make a website mobile friendly?

A large portion of web traffic comes from mobile devices, and a mobile friendly website ensures that users can interact with your business through smaller screens. Poor mobile usability can result in high bounce rates.

Does mobile friendliness affect SEO?

Yes, Google has officially stated that they primarily use mobile versions of each website for indexing and ranking. Sites that attract traffic on mobile devices are more likely to rank higher in search results.

How can I check if my website is mobile friendly?

Google Lighthouse provides insight on your site’s performance for both mobile and desktop versions. Additionally, you can access your browser’s developer tools (through F12 or Ctrl+Shift+I shortcut on Windows/Linux, Option+Cmd+I on Mac) and toggle a mobile view.

Should I prioritize any devices when testing for mobile friendliness?

Android and iOS systems are equally as important. Prioritize the most common screen sizes for your tests, as they will ensure that your site looks good and works flawlessly for the majority of visitors.

What common mobile website design mistakes should I look out for?

Small text and buttons, layouts that don’t adapt to vertical screens, and unoptimized images are the most common issues – each should be addressed immediately.

How can I quickly make a mobile friendly website?

With our AI website generator, you can create a site for your business in just minutes. It’s immediately designed to be mobile friendly, which lets you start with minimal effort.

Summary

Mobile website design has its fair share of nuances which take some getting used to, even for experienced web developers. Users operate on smaller screens with fingers touching noticeably larger areas than a mouse cursor. Additionally, as they’re usually on the move, they need to easily find any information they seek. For those reasons the matter of making your website mobile friendly cannot be disregarded.

Here's the easiest way to approach it - put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. When you’d encounter slow page loading, pop-ups galore, oversized images or unreadable text, you wouldn’t want to stick around. That’s precisely why you should make your website as accessible as you can for mobile users. After all, they constitute over half of your potential traffic.

This may seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. IKOL AI website generator makes it easy to launch your website immediately while ensuring that it’s mobile friendly straight away.

👉Try out IKOL today👈and discover what else it can do for both your business and your visitors.