Fact: Your website has to be mobile-friendly.
Reason: Around 70% of internet users browse using their cellphones.
But that doesn’t mean you can get away with just a mobile site. That’s because desktop users spend the most time on-site at about 46.4% of the total time globally.
Table of Contents
What is mobile-friendly web designing?
The terms responsiveness and mobile-friendly often get interchanged. But there is a distinction between the two.
A mobile-friendly website is designed to look and work the same on mobile as it does on desktop. So the placement of images and the static content do not change.
Building a mobile-friendly website means having a separate site for desktop and mobile.
A responsive website changes based on the device you’re accessing the site from. So the elements in the site move so that you get the same experience from the site.
Elements of Mobile-Friendly Design
Hero images aren’t mobile-friendly.
Like so, you need to know what website elements are appropriate and expected in a mobile-friendly design.
Navigation bar placement
Ease of navigation is one of the main priorities of mobile website developers. As the screen gets drastically smaller, users need to be able to jump from page to page.
Most people are right-handed. And most people use only one hand to scroll through their phones. So the left-hand corner of the screen is often the most inaccessible. So this is where most developers place elements like logos.
Hamburger menus were once the most popular in mobile website designing. But that’s been replaced in favor of icons. This gives users a better layout of the website.
Swiping functionalities
Tinder. That’s all we need to say.
This site makes good use of the swiping abilities you get in a smartphone. A mobile-friendly website usually has touch-screen elements in its design. This could be a pinch-zoom, hold-and-drag, or swiping.
On a desktop website, this is replaced with click navigation.
Clickability
On some websites, if you click on a text, automatically a pop-up to share on Twitter will come up. This is extremely annoying on mobiles where you need to touch to navigate.
So the click response of your website is a major expectation of mobile users.
This means you have to pay keen attention to the hyperlinks on your site.
- This doesn’t work on mobile.
- But hyperlinking like this is much more mobile-friendly.
5 Ways to Make Your WordPress Site Mobile-Friendly
Over half the websites on the internet are run on WordPress. And that’s not without good reason.
So it only makes sense that you know how to make your WordPress site mobile-friendly. Or you could hire a WordPress developer to do it for you.
Even so, let’s look at how to build a mobile-friendly WordPress site.
Mobile-friendly theme
The theme is the first step to building a WP website. And the best thing you can do for yourself is to pick a mobile-friendly theme when you start.
You can also create your own theme and make it mobile-friendly. But you’re digging yourself a hole if you start with a desktop-friendly theme with plans to make it mobile-friendly down the line.
Here are some of the best mobile-friendly WordPress Themes.
Neve
This is a theme from Themeisle that was built with mobile as a priority. It has responsive pages and support for Accelerated Mobile Pages. There is both a free and paid version of Neve.
Uncode
This theme has powerful features that are all mobile-friendly. The theme is lightweight which helps speed up the loading speed of your website. The theme is also compatible with many WP plugins.
Hestia
Hestia is a modern theme that is best for contemporary websites. It has a sleek design with mobile-responsive layouts.
Astra
This is a free WP theme that comes loaded with a ton of features and templates pre-loaded. It is a lightweight website that speeds up the loading time.
Profile Theme
If your WP site is to showcase your work, then this is the theme for you. This theme offers mobile-friendly features. It is responsive and has a bunch of templates that you can start from.
Use responsive Plugins
Plugins are synonymous with WordPress websites. They are mainly used to make the site more functional. For example, you can add an E-commerce plug-in to turn your site into a shop.
Plugins don’t change the front-end look of the website. But if your plugin isn’t responsive, then some elements may not appear the same across all devices.
Read the description of the plugin before buying it. The website will mention if it’s mobile-friendly. You could also read the reviews.
The only way to verify responsiveness is by manually checking every plugin on your phone to see if the elements are showing up correctly.
Go Light with Pop-Ups
Google’s bots hate when there are pop-ups on your mobile site. So though this is a good way to grab attention, hold back the enthusiasm to include pop ups on your mobile site.
Since January 2017, Google has had a penalty for inaccessible content. This includes a popup blocking the website content from your mobile audience.
Even still if you’re compelled to include a pop-up, avoid putting it on the front page. This might help you avoid being penalized.
Work on the site loading time
The loading speed of a website has always been a ranking criterion for desktop sites. But since 2018, loading speed is also an important factor on mobile websites.
Heavy themes and media are some of the main reasons why your site’s speed slows down. Make sure the theme you use is optimized and lightweight. This will vastly improve the loading time.
And if you have an e-commerce website, you can’t help but include tons of media and images. When this is the case, you can install plugins to improve the site speed. Here are some of them.
WP Super Cache
This is a free plugin that manages how content is cached. It generates static HTML files. This speeds up the loading time of your website.
BJ Lazy Load
This plugin replaces all your media content with a placeholder while it’s loading. This helps improve the initial load time of your website.
Asset CleanUp
This plugin toggles your scripts and plugins on and off as necessary. With only the necessary scripts running, your site will have a much faster loading time.
Image Optimization
Elements look different from a mobile to a desktop website. Though the other elements move, the most noticeable difference is with the images.
Make sure the images on your website are all optimized to be mobile-friendly. If it’s too large a file, it will affect the load time of your site.
Scaling is one of the most important aspects to look at when designing mobile-friendly sites. Set your media so that it scales from mobile to desktop site. If that’s not possible, you could hide some media elements on the mobile site.
Eliminate the doubt
The easiest way to check if Google bots like your mobile website is by running it through the test. Just search “Mobile-Friendly Test” on the Google search console.
Run your page through the first result that shows up.
Make tweaks to perfect your WordPress website for mobile.