Many businesses have recognized the importance of mobile web versions and have shifted their web design focus to mobile. This has led to a huge rise in the popularity of responsive websites.
These websites are designed to adapt their layout to fit any device or screen size. The most popular responsive website-building tool is WordPress.
Responsive websites are more convenient for customers and easier for search engines to crawl and index.
However, not all businesses can shift to a mobile-first strategy completely. Building a mobile version of their website may be the answer for those who can’t. But what exactly is a mobile version of a website, and how can you build one?
Why A Mobile Version Of Your Website Is Important
The first thing you need to consider when building a mobile version of your website is making it accessible. That means building a version of your site that can be viewed conveniently on a smartphone or a tablet.
Even if your target audience mainly consists of digital nomads, the occasional road warriors, or anyone else with a small screen, they should still be able to access your site easily.
A few things you could do to ensure accessibility include using large fonts, making the text bigger and more vibrant, and reducing the number of images on the page.
Doing these things will improve readability and make navigating your website easier for people with vision impairments.
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Adaptable Design
With a mobile version of your website, you’re allowing users to access your content and perform actions on your site, even when they’re moving. Because of this, you need to design your mobile website in a way that is easily navigable and usable.
To achieve this, you can use several techniques, like breaking down long sections into smaller chunks, providing easy access to the most vital information, or hiding certain content on the site until the user performs an action or clicks a link.
The key thing to remember is that your mobile web version should be adaptable; it should work on any device and in any browser.
You’re losing out on a huge audience if your site doesn’t work in a mobile browser. It’s important to test out your site in various browsers and devices to ensure it will work as intended.
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User-Friendly
A good mobile website should be not only accessible but also user-friendly. By this, we mean that it should be intuitively easy for anyone to use and navigate. Following the techniques above will help, but you also need to think about what the user experience is like on your site.
When users come back to your site after using another website to make a purchase, what will they experience?
Will they feel encouraged to come back and spend more time on your site, or will they feel frustrated because the site is not what they were looking for?
You’re losing out on many potential customers if your site is not user-friendly. Your site should be designed to be easy to navigate and accessible for everyone, even if they are not technologically inclined.
Make sure you test out different parts of your site, especially the ones that are more complex, to see if it’s something that a broad audience can easily understand.
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Find The Perfect Balance
As mentioned above, not all businesses can completely change how they do business because of how their current website functions. That’s why it’s important to find the right balance between usability and practicality when building a mobile version of your site.
You don’t want to make unnecessary changes to the site just to make it compatible with mobile devices, but at the same time, you don’t want to leave out important features either.
Make sure you test out different iterations of your site to find the perfect balance. Having a version of your site that is slightly adapted to fit each screen size will make your users happier and more likely to continue using your site.
It’s important not to lose sight of the bigger picture while implementing changes to make the site more suitable for mobile users.
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Make Sure It’s SEO-Friendly
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important aspect of any website’s design because it influences how Google and other search engines display websites in their results.
Essentially, SEO-friendly websites are easier for search engines to index and therefore appear higher in search results.
When designing a mobile website, you need to ensure that it is as easy to index by search engines. This means paying attention to things like how the site is laid out, how content is structured, and the keywords used throughout the site.
If your site does not already have a mobile SEO strategy, it’s time to put one in place.
Fortunately, various free tools are available to help you optimize your site for search engines. These tools will analyze the keywords and phrases most used by customers and track the performance of these keywords and phrases.
You can then use this information to adjust your content strategy and keyword usage to increase your site’s performance in search.
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Take Into Account Mobile Users’ Limitations
Even though we strive to make our websites as user-friendly and accessible as possible, some limitations come with being on the move.
For example, users on mobile devices often have smaller screens than desktop users, which means that they struggle to see certain content without zooming in.
If your site is designed for desktop users and you don’t consider the limitations of mobile users, you’re bound to have some content that is harder to see. If your target audience is mainly mobile users, it may not be the best idea to make the site completely accessible.
You should consider keeping some limitations in place to accommodate the mobile users’ experience better.
For instance, maybe you could choose to display fewer products on the homepage because there’s no way for the user to view all of the items in the catalog on a small screen.
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Consider The Type Of Content
The type of content you use on your site will influence the design of your mobile website. If you want to design a blog-like site, you’ll need to keep this in mind and consider using a similar navigation structure and typography.
If you’re creating a site for eCommerce, you’ll need to ensure that your cart is mobile compatible and that the user can easily find what they need.
Finally, make sure you test out different types of content, such as videos, slide shows, and interactive forms, to see how they work on mobile devices.
How your content is structured and presented is also important because it influences how users navigate and interact with the site.
The key points discussed above should help you get a good idea of creating a mobile version of your website, but if you want to learn more, read on.
Considering Creating A Mobile Version Now
An important part of any website is its mobile version. Having a mobile version of your website means that people can browse the site on their phones. This can be extremely useful, especially if you have a large online audience on social media. Having a mobile version allows you to take your site to the people, and doing that on the go is ideal. It also means that people can more easily find the information they want, no matter their device.
