13 Mobile Optimization Strategies for Your Website | 2024

In 2023, 63% of users in America search on mobile devices. This huge number of mobile users has led marketers to evaluate the strength of their software and take steps to make it perform better by using various mobile optimization techniques.

Then, what is mobile optimization and how to make a website mobile-friendly to improve user experience? Read the complete explanation here!

What Is Mobile Optimization?

Mobile optimization is the process of adjusting your website so that people using phones or tablets have a better experience when navigating it on their devices.

With the increasing use of mobile devices in the US especially, businesses must ensure that their websites are optimized for mobile devices.

There are various techniques that can be applied to make a website more mobile-friendly, such as making sure it loads quickly, every element is easy to read and is simple to navigate on smaller screens. 

Mobile optimization is not only important for user experience but also for search engine performance. Google, for example, considers mobile optimization when ranking websites. 

With that being said, if your site isn’t optimized, it may not appear as high in search results, which can reduce your visibility to potential customers.

Why Is Mobile Optimization Important?

Nowadays, people use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to access websites. Moreover, in the USA, 63% of organic search engine visits occur on mobile devices. 

Having a mobile-friendly website is important for your business as it helps you ensure that users can easily navigate and interact with your content, and keeps them engaged. 

If your site is difficult to use on a phone, then, what will likely happen? Yes, visitors are likely to leave and look for a competitor's site that works better.

Mobile optimization can also enhance your overall brand’s credibility. A well-designed, responsive website will automatically build a positive impression and trust with visitors. 

13 Mobile Optimization Techniques

To get a better user experience, These are 14 techniques of how to optimize a website for mobile devices:

1. Ensure The Same Content on Desktop & Mobile

First thing first, you need to make sure that all content is the same on the desktop version of your site as it is on mobile devices. 

However, sometimes it’s okay to adapt content slightly for mobile and focusing on what’s most relevant for smaller screens.

One of the techniques to maximize it is using responsive design. Responsive design involves creating style sheets that use “media queries” between different platforms and devices. 

If you want to maximize speed and make your design lean and mean, consider using CSS sprites to reduce server-side requests.

2. Use ‘Top Down’ Development Approach

A “top-down” development approach means you consider all the potential consequences of every decision made in the design from start to finish.

You must develop the mobile-first design, not the desktop version. This development approach is ideal because it minimizes the risk of issues arising later in the design process.

On the other hand, there is also the “bottom-up” process, which refers to a different development strategy where you start with detailed components before integrating them into a larger framework. 

You need to be careful while working on this process since various problems like bugs can arise if this approach isn’t managed well.

3. But, Don't Just Focus on Mobile Consumers

While it’s super important to focus on optimizing your website for mobile users, let’s not forget about those who prefer browsing on a desktop. 

A lot of people still use their laptops and desktops to access websites, whether they're at home, at work, or on the go. So, if your site only looks great on a phone, you might miss out on a significant chunk of your audience.

To really nail your website’s design, it’s crucial to consider how different people use different devices. You may take some time to analyze your audience by using tools like Google Analytics to see what devices they’re using most often. 

Are they primarily on mobile? Do they lean more towards desktops? This insight will guide you in creating a balanced experience that works well across all platforms.

4. Use Responsive Design Strategies

Responsive design is currently the best approach for creating websites that work well on all devices. This method uses media queries to adapt the layout based on different screen resolutions.

Also, each specific resolution is referred to as a “stopping point,” which is where the design transitions from one layout to another.

There are reasons why responsive design is still one of the best approaches, such as:

• No Duplicate Content Issues: Since the same content is displayed across all devices, you avoid problems that can arise from having multiple versions of the same page.
• Up-to-Date Technology: Responsive design utilizes the latest web technologies, ensuring that your site performs optimally on mobile devices.

5. Think About 'Code' Instead of 'Images Everywhere'

Instead of relying heavily on images, consider using encoded backgrounds as it can greatly enhance your site’s loading speed. 

Then, during your site audit process, you need to assess whether certain images are truly necessary and if they can be replaced with code, especially in designs that use a lot of graphics.

6. Customize WordPress for Mobile Devices

WordPress offers a wealth of plugins designed specifically to enhance mobile compatibility, ensuring that your site looks and functions well on various devices. Here are some key tools and strategies to consider:

• Duda Mobile: Provides customizable templates that automatically adjust to fit different screen sizes. 
• W3 Total Cache: To cache static files and minimize load times.
• HTML and CSS Minification Plugins: Minifying your code removes unnecessary spaces, comments, and characters.
• Image Optimization Plugins: Use plugins like Smush or EWWW Image Optimizer to compress and optimize images without sacrificing quality. 

7. Don't Use Intrusive Interstitials to Sell a Product

If your main goal on your website is to increase product sales, then it’s important to create a smooth shopping experience for your visitors. 

One way to do this is by avoiding intrusive ads that can annoy users and drive them away. Here are some tips to keep your advertising effective and user-friendly:

• Instead of bombarding users with pop-ups or full-screen ads, consider placing your ads at the bottom or on the side of the page. 
• Always give users a clear option to close or dismiss ads. 
• Follow Google’s guidelines against disruptive interstitials, which can lead to penalties in search rankings. 

8. Check Sites on Different Operating Systems and Displays 

You should identify weaknesses in the implementation of the website on various devices and operating systems. It is essential to check the site on various devices and platforms. However, if a thousand devices are not available, check for issues on different applications to enable a more comprehensive approach to website optimization.

If you have a budget, the Google Web Developer Chrome Extension is a tool that allows users to analyze website displays across different screen sizes, resolutions, device orientations, and touch input interactions. In addition, the tool also provides debugging to check the code in case of any issues.

9. Use Mobile Video Best Practices

Mobile video is important for Google to understand your content. This includes on-page text, referral links, structured data, and video files.

Google recommends using VideoObject in Schema.org to be structured. So, you can use custom controls with div root elements, video media, and custom video control div children. 

Also, try to use a video sitemap, avoid URL fragments, and HTML tags such as video, iframe, object, or embed to make your video easy to find. 

Then, use thumbnail formats supported by Google and check your robots.txt file is not blocked to improve the crawling and indexing of your mobile videos.

10. Use Structured Data Information

Schema.org structured data is important for identifying web pages with unique information for search engines. 

As mobile indexing becomes more prevalent, Schema will be used more and more. This method provides concise, easy-to-understand information that can be translated into featured snippets in mobile search results. 

Schema-structured data can also be used on desktops to improve site visibility based on targeted keywords.

11. Don’t Block Supporting Scripts for Your Mobile Design

You need to Block supporting scripts to prevent issues, such as mobile soft 404s and desktop 404s. Blocking these files will prevent Google from crawling them, which if happens will potentially result in lower rankings. Therefore, you should make sure your website works correctly on all platforms.

12. Image Optimization and Compression

Next, you should optimize images for mobile web design in all sizes and resolutions. Google recommends some responsive design best practices to optimize images for mobile platforms.

• Use relative image sizes.
• Use inline images.
• Use the srcset attribute for higher DPI devices.
• Expand product images if you are doing SEO marketplace.

13. Optimize The Overall Page Size

Page size is a main consideration for a mobile-friendly website. To make your website more mobile-friendly, the page size must load quickly. 

To do this, you need to optimize the overall DOM size and consider the page size by doing the following steps:

• Don't Use Custom Fonts: Using unnecessary custom fonts can complicate your page-loading process. This will make your page speed even longer.
• Optimize Your Images: You should use an image file size that suits the mobile device to ensure that the image quality does not break and degrade. This requires expertise in optimizing images to get the desired results.
• Reduce Overall DOM Resources and Critical Rendering Paths: The more resources it takes to render, the higher your page download speed will be. You don't need more than 10 plugins (maximum) and three to four script files to process a web page. WordPress pages should be 150-250 KB on average and not more than seven resources (CSS, external fonts, ads, JavaScript, and three plugins).
• Compressing Your Page: You must compress files to save space and reduce overall page load time. This will help you eliminate space in the code to minimize the required space. This process does not involve plugins, you should hire a developer to shrink your page manually.

Conclusion

So, that's everything you need to know about mobile optimization, from its definition, importance, and application to improving your business website performance and user experience. 

Not just rankings, the longer you delay the implementation of mobile on your website, the more traffic and potential customers you will lose.

Mobile optimization is an important factor in increasing traffic on search engines. However, the process may be complicated and time-consuming, especially if you’re starting from scratch. But don’t let that discourage you! 

You can collaborate with SEO Services by cmlabs to optimize the website as a whole to have a high ranking on search engines. 

We have a whole team of professional software developers that can help you work on everything you need. So, contact our marketing team and tell them what you need for free!