Since the roll out of the latest mobile search friendly google search algorithm back in April, some businesses have reported changes in rankings.
This is due to the fact that businesses must offer a mobile optimised site in order to appear higher on Google. However simply having a mobile responsive site design isn’t enough, though having one could boost your visibility percentage by over 10%.
In order to maximise this effectively there a few handy tips you can follow to help optimise your site and get you above competitors on Google. Here are just some of the tips which can make your website more mobile friendly today:
1. Place CTA buttons properly
All websites have CTAs, whether it’s encouraging to buy a product or service, download material or sign up to a newsletter service. It’s important you display these CTA buttons properly in a way that can be easily identified by your user. In mobile terms, you should keep CTA buttons within the top half of the page, making it far more convenient and easy to load for the mobile user on a smaller screen.
2. Ensure your navigation is optimised
The website must be easy to navigate generally if you want to keep traffic on your site, but you should also consider the mobile user differently here too. As well as a clear and concise navigation of a few clicks on your desktop, you should also have a smooth navigation process for the mobile user, which shouldn’t take them more than 2 or 3 taps to get to where they need to be.
3. Mobile typography
Typography has always been important at the design stage of websites, but now more than ever it’s vital to get this right. In a world where smartphones and tablets are so readily available and can access websites in an instant, you must consider the typography of your site, from the brand logo down to the main web copy. This is often moulded to the size of the device, so means you must ensure it can be read at various sizes. The main points to consider when thinking about effective mobile typography are spacing, measure, the contrast and the rag.
4. The ability to reach the homepage
This is a bit of a no-brainer, but the user must always be able to make it back to your homepage easily and quickly, no matter which page of your site they are currently browsing on. The most effective way to do this is to ensure you have a ‘home’ tab and that it doesn’t take more than 1 click to get back to the homepage.
5. Avoid pop up registration forms
Whilst registration or sign-up forms which pop up as you load a site on desktop may be purposeful and help you gather the data you need, it often looks messy and can be off-putting on mobile. Mobile users probably don’t want to sign up to your service right away if they just came to browse your content or offerings off the back of a Google search. They will want to know more about you first. More than this, pop-ups on mobile are more than annoying as they often aren’t created for those types of device so can be difficult to get rid of or move past unless you take the desired action of filling them out, and nobody likes to be forced to do something online.
These are just some basic tips, though they do come as a recommendation from Google so you can trust you’ll move up that search engine if you adopt these tips.
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