Today, most people spend most of their time on their smart phones instead of on their PC. This makes many web developers change their focus from PCs and towards mobiles. Since April 2015, websites that are not mobile friendly have been lowered in Google’s SERP (search engine result pages). This surely makes many business owners want their sites become more mobile friendly once more. However, creating a mobile friendly site requires certain skills, therefore as a business owner you would need to hire web developers but don’t forget to check whether your site is really mobile friendly with the following methods.
1. Dragging Method
Open your website in a browser, and then grab the right side of your browser window to the left with your mouse. Drag it until you can’t shrink your browser anymore. The result will be like this.
On the left side, we see that the website still looks good. While on the right side, the website looks like being cut off where the content is jumbled, or it just doesn’t look right. If your website looks like the example on the right side, then your site is probably not mobile friendly. However, this test isn’t 100% reliable; therefore you will need to perform some other tests.
2. The 30-Second Method
Another way is to test your site on Google, as now Google has offered a website where people can test their websites and see if Google says it is mobile friendly. The method is very simple; all you need is to paste the URL of your website into the space as shown below, then click “Analyze”.
After few seconds, Google will tell whether your website is mobile friendly or not. Moreover, Google will also tell you the reasons why your website isn’t mobile friendly. Aside from that, the latest study reveals that from 95 top digital marketing firms, 10% had problems, such as follows:
- Content wider than screen
- Links too close together
- Text too small to read
- Mobile viewport not set (makes sure people don’t have to scroll horizontally on your website to see everything)
3. The 3-Minute Method
Google does not only have Google Webmaster Tools, but it also has mobile usability test that can give you added insights into issues your website may have. Some people say that 3-minute-method is more accurate than the 30-second method as the 30-second test usually cannot detect the error that the 3-minute method often detects. It may take a bit longer to set up and run this test, if you don’t already have your website set up in Google Webmaster Tools.
Moreover, in order to have a mobile friendly website, you also need to avoid these common mistakes related to mobile websites, such as:
- Blocked JavaScript, CSS and image files
- Unplayable content
- Faulty redirects
- Mobile-only 404s
- App download interstitials
- Irrelevant cross-links
- Slow mobile pages
So, are you ready to give your website a check? If you have tried the three techniques above and the result shows that you’re website is not mobile friendly yet then it’s time to talk to your web developers and get them to resolve these issues. If you have an old website, then a new website development is probably the right approach, because many technologies have changed in the last 5 years, and so you will probably have more problems converting over rather than starting fresh.
But once it all set, your website will surely gain the benefits of improved visitor experiences. Good luck!