5 steps to making your WordPress site mobile friendly

Mobilegeddon or Google’s 2015 mobile-friendly update cemented the fact that we live in a mobile-first world. The algorithm update by the search-engine giant favored websites, which were optimized for smaller screens, including WordPress websites.

No longer a blogging tool, WordPress CMS (Content Management System) is a favorite with industry professionals to build brilliant websites. But Google doesn’t want websites to be just brilliant, it wants them to be mobile-friendly all the way.

Here comes the big (and the most obvious) question. How to make a website mobile-friendly? Is it through age-old tricks or some new trends on the market that will help your cause?

Find out by going through some quick tips, which will help you make your WordPress website mobile-friendly.

HOST IT RIGHT

The first thing you need to do right away is to select the best WordPress hosting company or service. For those who are new to this, you can up your hosting game by taking a few things into consideration. These include but are not limited to –

1. Specialists – It is always a good idea to opt for WordPress hosting specialists. With their expertise and experience in this domain, a specialist provider will definitely be a savior when it comes to hosting a mobile-friendly site. Reviews posted by previous customers will give you a better perspective regarding this.
2. Pricing – Price is one of the deciding factors when it comes to choosing any hosting company or service. But it should not be ‘the only’ deciding factor. You need to stress upon quality and therefore, settle for nothing but the best hosting provider, even if it means you have to shell out a few dollars more.
3. Package – Got a hosting deal that is too good to be true? Before you sign on the dotted line and seal the deal, ask the hosting provider what all are included in the hosting package. There are instances when a cheap hosting package will not have the best hardware configurations necessary to serve your requirements and this will ultimately lead to issues such as downtime or loading issues. If the features/add-ons included in the package suit your needs in the best possible way, then go ahead and select the hosting company.
4. Support – One of the clear advantages of getting your WordPress from a reputed hosting company is excellent tech support. There is, after all, no denying the fact that you need a person.

With the right hosting company, the other steps will definitely fall in place.

GO RESPONSIVE

Responsive design is the crux of any mobile-friendly website as it creates similar experience irrespective of the device used to view the website and navigate through it. Apart from being easy to access from different mobile devices, a responsive website also brings to the table SEO benefits and is much easier to manage in the long run.

Begin by choosing from a wide range of WordPress themes and plugins, which make the website responsive. Alternatively, if you want to try your hand at using responsive design framework, you can follow 1stwebdseigner’s guide to making a website responsive in about 15 minutes!

THE NO-BRAINER

It doesn’t take ages to guess the fact that when you design for mobile, you need to take into consideration the font sizes and the button sizes. The idea is to make “touch targets” easier to hit for the users. The larger the touch target is, the easier it becomes for the users to take the desired call to action.

Say for instance, when a user wants to register on an eCommerce website, he would want to quickly fill all the fields and enter the submit button. When the button is difficult to touch and tap, users tend to get frustrated with the continuous, unsuccessful efforts and may abandon the form altogether, adding to the bounce rate of the website.

The solution to avoid such situations is to turn to user interface guidelines provided by various mobile platforms, which you need to keep in mind for making your WordPress website mobile-friendly. These guidelines specifically provide details about the font, button and even icon sizes for different platforms. By adhering to these, you can never go wrong when it comes to mobile-friendly web design.

SIMPLICITY IS THE KEY

Nothing works on mobile devices like a clean, simple web design.

Whether it is the color scheme, the logo, the placement of elements, the typography and content, everything needs to be uncomplicated for the users. They should be able to get the message you want to convey within a few seconds of visiting the website.

One of the easiest ways to embrace simplicity is to opt for minimalism on your website.

• Do away with any unnecessary element on the website. This includes all sorts of graphics, text, animation etc. which hinder the site’s ability to load fast.
• Choose clean, minimalist WordPress themes that matches your requirements.
• Opt for a minimalist color palette.
• Choose a striking typography that stands out.
• Make use of whitespace.

While these are some standard ways through which you can go minimal when it comes to your WordPress website, you can always try experimenting and break some rules. Everyone likes to be surprised after all!

TEST, TEST, TEST

When you are done making your WordPress website mobile-friendly for the users, the next step is to test it time and again not only on various mobile devices, but also using other tools such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly test and W3C MobileOK Checker.

All that you need to do is to copy and paste the URL of your website on the field provided on these websites and you will instantly get the results. No waiting!

Conclusion

These are some of the obvious steps, which will help you create a mobile-friendly WordPress website for your users. Have a say on this? Want us to add something to the list? Let us know your views by posting a comment.