9 Tips to Create a Mobile Friendly Website to Improve SEO

A mobile-friendly website is very important in this digital era. As more and more internet users access the internet via mobile devices, it is important for website owners to ensure that their websites are optimal, responsive, and comfortable on mobile devices.

In addition, mobile-friendly websites can provide a better user experience, increase visitor retention rates, and allow businesses to reach and interact with a wider audience.

However, how do you make a mobile-friendly website?

The following guide explains what mobile friendliness is, the reasons for having one, and how to make one to boost the performance of your business through the website.

What is a Mobile Friendly Website?

A mobile-friendly website is one that is designed to function optimally on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

At this time, mobile friendliness is a mandatory thing a website should have. This is because more and more people are accessing the internet via mobile devices compared to desktops.

The Importance of Having a Mobile-Friendly Website

Mobile-friendly websites can respond optimally when users access them via mobile devices. Prioritizing mobile friendliness is very important in dealing with the increasing trend of using mobile devices. In addition, there are still other reasons, namely:

1. Easily Accessible

The easy accessibility of a mobile-friendly website can increase sales and conversions. This is because users can easily interact and engage with brands. In the long run, accessibility can be key to creating long-term loyalty and customer retention.

2. Build Credibility and Trust

Customers have a tendency to know a brand can be accessed anywhere and anytime and believe a business is reliable and trustworthy. A mobile-friendly website can be the answer to this challenge.

Mobile-friendliness can provide a flexible, adaptive brand image and be able to meet customer demands through innovation. Conditions can build credibility and customer trust.

3. The Most Effective Way To Improve SEO

Google's algorithm prioritizes websites that are mobile-friendly because having such quality can increase the potential of overall sales and conversion increases.

Therefore, it can be said that making sure a website is mobile-friendly can help you maintain and improve rankings on the SERP.

4. Cost Effective and Easy to Manage

Websites that are mobile-friendly have lower operational costs because they don't need to be developed for mobile and desktop separately.

In addition, this website is also easy to modify because it can be displayed on all types of devices. Therefore, mobile-friendly websites are easier to develop and manage.

How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Website

Mobile-friendly websites have an important role in SEO. Bad SEO can worsen the visibility of a website. Here are some ways to create a mobile-friendly website, namely:

1. Implement Responsive Layout

A website that has a responsive layout can scale itself according to the device it is being viewed on without any rendering issues. In addition, the existence of a responsive layout can increase the SEO value of a website.

This is because Google prefers to index websites that have a responsive layout. That way, using a responsive layout on a website can increase its ranking on the SERP.

Checking the level of responsive layout on a website can be done using BrowserStack Responsive. Testers can view the website on different devices and get various inputs to make the website have a better responsive layout. 

2. Optimizing Website Speed

47% of visitors leave a website if it has a loading time of more than 2 seconds. Meanwhile, a 1-second delay on a website can reduce conversion rates by 7%. Based on this, website speed plays an important role in creating a good first impression.

Google itself considers website speed a factor in its ranking. Therefore, developers and website owners must be able to increase the speed of their websites.

Website speed can be evaluated using the BrowserStack SpeedLab. The tool will verify website speed on various devices.

The website speed optimization also needs to be checked based on the information about the mobile version of Core Web Vital using the Page Speed ​​Test tool from cmlabs.

3. Implement Subtle Pop-Ups

The existence of pop-ups can sometimes annoy users when browsing websites. Some pop-ups even have an X (to close pop-ups), which is not very visible, adding to user annoyance.

Implementing pop-ups that annoy users can lower conversion rates. Therefore, developers and website owners must implement subtle pop-ups instead of annoying pop-ups.

There are several techniques for implementing subtle pop-ups, namely by displaying pop-ups when users scroll down 70%–80% of website pages, making pop-up designs suitable for mobile-friendly websites, and making clear CTAs on pop-ups.

4. Combining Viewport Meta Tags

The Viewport Meta tag is an HTML tag that functions to make website pages more supportive and responsive. This tag can help website developers control the scale of the website on various devices.

The Viewport Meta tag will give instructions to the browser to scale the size of the website according to the device used.

5. Tidy Up Website Design

Website developers must ensure that each website page has a continuous design. This aims to reduce the level of user confusion and facilitate page navigation.

In order for the user experience to be even better, the website must have a minimalist and neat design that makes navigation intuitive. Therefore, it is important for website developers to spruce up the website's design.

There are several ways to tidy up the website design, namely by using a modern website design, ensuring users can open all menus on the website with one click, and making navigation easier.

6. Testing the Website on Mobile Devices

Testing websites on mobile devices is an effective way to ensure the website has a good and optimal user experience.

Testing websites on mobile devices can also provide several benefits, such as enabling the detection of problems that users may encounter in real-world conditions and carrying out each user's journey on the website.

You can check a website's mobile friendliness by using the Mobile Friendly Test tool from cmlabs.

7. Updating Content Properly

A mobile-friendly website must have content with the right approach. Website developers must ensure that content is readable and well-oriented on mobile devices.

In addition, website developers must consider space restrictions on smaller screens so that content can be displayed clearly. In order to avoid errors when content is displayed, a visual comparison test must be carried out on the website.

8. Not Using Flash

Flash is a platform that has the function of adding interactivity, such as videos and animations, to websites. Flash does make pages more interactive, but websites can be slower. Flash can make loading times even longer and is sometimes not compatible with mobile devices.

This can affect SEO and disrupt the user experience. Instead, website developers can use HTML5 and CSS to make websites more responsive and mobile-friendly.

9. Make the Website Compatible with Multiple Orientations

The phone has a screen display in landscape and portrait orientations. This is certainly different from desktops, which only have a screen display in landscape orientation.

Therefore, website developers must ensure that the website can function properly and optimally in landscape and portrait orientations without UI distortion or other disturbances.

So, that's all you need to know about a mobile-friendly website, starting from understanding, the reasons for having one, to how to make it boost the performance of your business website.

In order to increase business visibility, you can use SEO Services from cmlabs. With the help of our SEO specialists, your website can be comprehensively monitored.