Many businesses and hobbyists consider their websites their lifeline – it is the base of their online operations. Creating a website is one thing, but designing and keeping it maintained is another: which is why keeping a web design company on board is a must. That said, don't just get the web design company next door – hire the ones that have the credentials to back them up! You should also make sure that they specialize in mobile optimization and responsive designs. Why?
Making your website responsive is a must nowadays, simply because it makes your site automatically adjust to the dimensions of the device used to access it. Remember, majority of people connecting to the Internet nowadays no longer use desktop computers most of the time: they use mobile devices. By going responsive, you've achieved step one of the mobile optimization process. What are the other steps?
Keep a one-dimensional, scroll down design
Bear in mind that not everything you see on a desktop can fit on a four inch smart phone screen. In order to do so, simply create a scroll down design. Why?
- ALL mobile users prefer to swipe vertically, rather than horizontally. Designing a horizontal scroll website is not only inconvenient, but it's career suicide. No, that's not an exaggeration.
- It keeps all information accessible in one motion.
- Lastly, scroll down websites are the current trend. In the field of web design, it's either you adapt to the trends or die with the old ones.
If you do prefer to pull all information in one page without having users to scroll down (or horizontally at that), use sliders to display information. However, be sure to make the transition buttons visible!
Large text and icons
Keep this in mind: a smart phone or tablet screen is miniscule compared to that of a laptop or a desktop computer. With that you need to scale everything and make the content larger for mobile users – especially the text and icons. Larger and clearer fonts will make it easy for your users to read your content, thus creating a positive user experience. The same can be said when it comes to the icons – they need to be finger friendly. Remember, your users aren't using a mouse – they're using their fingers.
Make file sizes a lot smaller
Today, speed in the Internet is everything – a slow loading page is scorned, and is most likely to be met by a closed tab or button than a 10 minute wait. In order to speed things up, don't put images (backgrounds, product descriptions, decorations) with large file sizes on your website. Instead, either put thumbnails or ones less than 100kb. Remember not to sacrifice quality though. Users hate pixelated images just as much.
Lastly, don't use a separate M.example.com domain
Doing so is a bad search engine optimization practice. A website with an m. before the domain name is a totally new domain – meaning, it's a totally different site from your main website. Mobile specific websites are either dying or dead, this is why you need to resort to responsive designs instead. You have the same domain, and a mobile-optimized site.
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