In 2024 website statistics show that 65.65% of the world's website traffic was on a mobile device. Whilst every business will be different, it is without doubt one of the most important areas to consider when you are building your website.
Definitions
Before diving into the details, here are some definitions of phrases used in this article:
Mobile Friendly:
A mobile friendly website is a website that is easy to use on mobile devices, particularly without needing to zoom in and out of the page to see content.
Responsive Web Design (RWD):
Responsive web design is a method of building a website to dynamically change its design or layout to suitably fit different screen sizes.
Progressive Web App (PWA):
A progressive web app is a website built to give a user similar experiences to a mobile app and can be saved to a mobile device home screen.
Mobile Friendly Websites
What makes a mobile friendly website?
There are a number of key aspects that must be met to make a website mobile friendly:
- Readability: Text must be easy to read, without having to zoom an entire page in or out.
- Usability: You must be able to easily and quickly use the website and its functions and for this to be an enjoyable experience.
- Speed: Fast loading pages are essential due to the possibility of mobile devices using a mobile data connection and not necessarily WiFI. Users will leave quickly if they have to wait for a page to load.
- Easy navigation: Ensuring visitors can find what they are looking for easily.
In essence, your site needs to be fast, easy to use and give a great user experience.
What device do people use to view my website?
During the consultation period of our website builds, we will look at any existing visitor statistics you have for website traffic. If you have GA4 (Google Analytics Version 4) you can view for yourself what devices your users view your website on by navigation to Reports - Users - Tech - Overview. You can look in more detail at the results, comparing conversions between devices is a great place to start and helping learn where improvements can be made.
Is my website mobile friendly?
Good starting points to test how mobile friendly your website is include the Bing Mobile Friendly Test Tool.
More advanced options with comprehensive action points include:
- Lighthouse Website Audit Tool Lighthouse
- Google Search Console: Google Page experience and Core web vitals are essential tools to help improve your website performance.
These tests will look at a huge range of factors from technical areas such as site speed, CSS & javascript to usability factors such as are links and buttons clickable.
Does mobile friendliness affect SEO
Yes! This is a key area we focus on when we perform website audits. Google rewards websites that perform well on mobile. Find out more about our website audits here.
Responsive Web Design
What is Responsive Web Design (RWD)?
Responsive web design is a great way to get a mobile friendly website. It involves creating a website that automatically changes depending on the device or screen size a user is on. Blocks of content, text and images will dynamically scale and / or reposition to fit the screen.
Why is Responsive Web Design so important?
Nowadays there are hundreds of different devices and screen sizes, so ensuring your website works easily on each of these can be a huge challenge. Using responsive web design makes this possible without having to build a design for every device, helping keep your build and maintenance costs lower.
How to test if your website is responsive?
The simplest way to do this is to open your website in a browser on your computer. Then make your browser screen progressively narrower. The content on your website should seamlessly merge down onto the small screen size, with the page still easy to read.
Another way of doing this is to view your website in Chrome using Developer Tools. In your Chrome browser, open your website page, click on Settings - More Tools - Developer Tools. This will open up an area where you can change the device you are viewing your website in.
What should I choose, a RWD, mobile app, or PWA?
Unfortunately I cannot give you a simple answer to this! It depends on your own business offering and, importantly, your target audience and their preferences. During our consultation process we can guide you through the various options and advise you on the best choice to reach your audience and exceed their expectations.
Mobile Friendly Websites with Channel
At Channel mobile friendly websites are an integral part of all of our website builds. From PWA’s to responsive web design, we will ensure your website performance on all devices, anywhere in the world. Talk to us to find out more how we can help you.
