As people’s reliance on smartphones has increased exponentially, businesses need to have a mobile-friendly web portal to reach their targeted customers. Unsurprisingly, mobile devices contribute to over 60% of overall global internet traffic. Therefore, a mobile-friendly web development portal can help improve your SERP ranking.
A mobile-friendly website is not something that runs on smartphones but should be responsive and offer a seamless experience without compromising on user experience.
However, ensuring a mobile-friendly web development portal is quite challenging and requires extensive expertise. That’s why we have decided to share some best practices that can help ensure a mobile-friendly web development portal.
8 Best Practices to Ensure a Mobile-friendly Web Development Portal
1. Develop a responsive layout
Developing a responsive layout allow a website to optimize its size to fit various screen sizes. It can quickly adapt to multiple devices, displaying the relevant content. For instance, it may move from a two-column layout on the desktop to a one-column on the smartphone. If your web development portal were designed keeping responsiveness in mind, it wouldn’t affect the loading time and user experience.
Another prominent benefit of a responsive, mobile-friendly website is that it improves SERP ranking, as many search engines prefer mobile-friendly websites to show relevant content to users. Google’s ranking algorithms usually prefer mobile-rendered versions of websites.
2. Optimize website speed
Speed is everything when it comes to browsing the internet. A website that loads fast will likely have higher retention rates than a site that lags. The best way to speed up your website speed and make it mobile-friendly is to lessen the storage load.
You can host your videos on third-party sites and then embed them on your website. This way, your website remains lightweight, and its loading speed will increase accordingly.
3. Compress images
Images are an essential component of any website, but they can also slow down the loading time if they are too large. To avoid this, you should compress images before uploading them to your site.
Compressing images reduces the amount of data that needs to be transferred to display them, which improves the website speed. You can use free tools like Kraken.io to compress images without losing quality.
You should also choose the proper image formats, such as JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, AVIF, and WebP, which are more efficient than JPEGs and PNGs of the same quality. Using these formats can make your site faster.
Another way to optimize images for your site is to use lazy loading. This technique allows images to load only when they are visible to the user. This means that images below the website’s fold – or what the user cannot see without scrolling down – will not load until the user scrolls down. This can save bandwidth and improve the user experience.
4. Use HTML5
Adobe Flash is a standard tool for creating animations, but it has a significant drawback: it does not work on mobile devices. This means that your website will not be accessible to many users if you use Flash. Therefore, you should avoid Flash and use HTML5 instead.
HTML5 is a modern web standard that allows you to do many things online without needing any plugins. You can embed videos and audio, as well as create animations, using HTML5, which is compatible with mobile devices. HTML5 also has many other benefits, such as better performance, security, and accessibility.
5. Avoid Pop-ups
Pop-ups are an excellent way to capture the attention of your website visitors on desktop devices, but they are not suitable for mobile devices.
Pop-ups are challenging to display and interact with on smaller screens, and you cannot trigger them at specific moments – such as when a user is about to leave your site or when they reach the Contact Us section.
It can also be frustrating for users to close the pop-ups from a mobile screen because the X button might be hidden or too small.
6. Change button size and placement
Buttons are essential for mobile website usability, but they need to be designed and placed correctly. Most mobile device users navigate with their thumbs, so buttons should be big enough to tap with a thumb.
Users should also be able to access any button on your website with their thumb while scrolling, which means buttons should be positioned near the bottom of the page.
7. Use large and readable fonts
The font size that works well on a desktop might not be enough to make the text readable on a mobile device. The best way to check if the text is clear is to test it on a mobile device.
Don’t use unfamiliar fonts, such as cursive fonts, on a mobile device because they might not be easy to read. Try to make some lines of text bold and use the same font style throughout.
Use black for text instead of different colors. This helps users see the text better when the background has a different color or when there are reflections, such as sunlight, when using the device outdoors.
8. Space out links
Links are helpful in providing more information or directing users to other pages, but they can also be challenging to tap on a mobile device. To make it easier for users to click the link they want, you should space out your links.
You should also limit the number of links to avoid cluttering your page with blue text and limit the number of redirections that take users to another site for a better mobile user experience.
Conclusion
In this blog, we have discussed nine best practices for mobile-friendly web development portal. By following these best practices, you can create a mobile-friendly web development portal that can attract and retain more users, increase conversions, and enhance your online presence. We hope you found this blog helpful and informative. Thank you for reading!