Most netizens are now using their cell phones to access the internet. Some no longer view websites on a personal computer or laptop; they prefer to surf using their smartphones to search and tap into your site with ease. Thus, your website needs to be accessible on the various devices that people use today. To prepare for this eventuality, you need to learn how to create a mobile-friendly site to accommodate your users.
If your site is built using WordPress, you should also check for high speeds, meaning your web pages should automatically load once the audience clicks on any link. When a website is slow or unresponsive, they tend to look for other sites with better performance. This will result in lost traffic and revenue.
What Makes A Site Mobile-Friendly?
Before you learn how to improve your site's speed and optimize it for mobile display, you need to orient yourself on the qualities of a mobile-friendly website:
It Has Responsive Display
The foundation of a mobile-friendly website is a responsive design. Without such a design, the audience will see only a miniature version of the desktop site, making them scroll vertically and horizontally to find anything they need on your site.
It Has Proper Text Formatting And Readable Fonts
Like the desktop version, your main goal is to make your content readable for your target audience. The content should use readable fonts and have proper text formatting. Novelty fonts like scripts and cursives will make it harder for people to read your content, especially on a smaller screen.
Be aware of the sizes of your fonts, too. They shouldn't be too small that your audience will have a hard time reading it, and not too large that it occupies most of the space on their screens.
For formatting, you need to keep your blocks of text short and break them when needed. Using headlines and bulleted lists makes it readable for most people. However, you should only use this formatting when it makes sense on the article or content.
Google offers a lot of beautiful fonts, to learn how to use them in WordPress, refer to this article.
It Has Optimized Media Display
When optimizing images and other visual elements for your mobile site, you should always test them first. Ensure that they have the right size and quality to look good on smartphones or tablets. Remember that the images and infographics should have the ability to fit or be resized, depending on the screens where they're being accessed. That way, users won't need to scroll incessantly to see the complete picture.
It Has Mobile-Friendly Navigation
Navigation is crucial because this is how your audience will find what they need. When optimizing your site for mobile display, you need to think about touches and taps rather than mouse clicks. Also, reduce the need for any data entry when you optimize a site for mobile display. Since smartphones are smaller, typing information can become a chore. It will help if you organize the navigation so people will find what they need without having to type into the search space or contact you without filling out a form.
How To Increase WordPress Site Speed on Mobile
A slow and cumbersome website can adversely affect the user's experience and drastically decrease overall conversion rates. As a result, it becomes imperative to speed up a slow website. If you're unsure of how to check the site's speed and reasons why it may be going slow, you should contact services like gr0 or eLightUp to help you optimize your mobile pages to load fast.
If you want to explore site speed optimization on your own, here are some simple things you can do:
Use Compression
Many web hosting providers use compression to increase web page loading speed. Although this technique reduces the page size, the effect is usually minimal because most users scan the web page content without noticing the compression settings. To ensure optimal performance, you have to make sure that all pages are correctly compressed before the site goes live.
Increase Cache
When a page is retrieved from the server, the browser will search through the cache to find more information about that page. If the page wasn't downloaded from the cache, this search could take place. The purpose of the cache is to reduce the load time of the web page and maximize site speed. The cache has to be set up according to your website's requirements.
Remove Useless Plugins
WordPress offers more than 50,000 plugins. You might be overwhelmed at first and end up installing far too many of these on your site. Know that plugins are one of the reasons why your site might not be loading fast enough. The more plugins you have, the more your database will process a larger number of queries, which slows the site down. Extra plugins also cause the databases to bloat, which can affect their efficiency and increase load time. You should also ensure that you update your plugins from time to time. Outdated ones could compromise security.
In addition to removing the data of unused plugins, you should delete other unused data, read more here.
Choose A Good Web Hosting Service
Choosing a good web hosting service will do wonders in terms of your site speed. Not all web hosting services provide the same capacity and features. Thus, it's essential to test each candidate before choosing one that suits your site's needs.
Summary
In today's digital age, a mobile-friendly website is essential as the number of mobile users is rising. Since there are more mobile device users than before, many businesses and companies are adapting with the times by converting into mobile-friendly sites. They know that a mobile-friendly site may just be the first step toward building better customer service.
Thus, your mobile-friendly website should have a responsive display and proper font and text formatting. Mobile-friendly navigation is also a must so people can search the site easily. The website speed is also essential to keep your customers and audience happy. Aside from optimizing the images, increasing cache, and removing useless plugins, you need to choose the right web hosting service to ensure that your site loads quickly. Improving customer experience is the key to having increased traffic and better revenues in the digital world.
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