Surely, the phrase Website Responsive, Responsive Design, Mobile-Web Design … is no longer strange to those working in the field of E-commerce. It is a new website design trend that started in 2012 when mobile devices have revolutionized the way we connect and the way many companies and organizations operate. And more importantly, users’ habits are gradually shifting to searching on mobile devices because of its convenience anytime, anywhere.
Owning a mobile-friendly website is one way to improve your search engine ranking and also means that you are affirming your brand in a comprehensive way. In contrast, the websites that fail to make a sincere, strategic effort to deliver a quality mobile experience risk falling drastically behind their competitors. In order to help you keep up, this article will explain to you what a mobile-friendly website is and recommend you some of the most common tips and tricks to designing the friendliest of mobile-friendly websites. Let’s get to it.
What is a mobile-friendly website?
Mobile Friendly or website design according to mobile standard is a Responsive Design specialized for mobile devices. Simply, a mobile-friendly website is a site that is designed and optimized for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
In particular, a mobile responsive design is a process of creating a website that adapts to the screen size it’s viewed on. This responsive design technology helps your website automatically scale to each screen resolution. It will automatically hide or show the necessary parts for each screen resolution.
The Importance of Mobile Website Design – Inevitable trend in the era of technology boom
Mobile Website Design – Inevitable trend in the era of technology boom (link ảnh)
There is a fact that mobile device use now dominates desktop computers and they are also changing shopping habits. All in all, the world is now mobile-first – and that’s why you need a mobile responsive website.
So, herein are the benefits of mobile website design:
Catching up with new trend of users
In Vietnam and all the world, the number of users of smartphones and other mobile devices is growing rapidly, approaching and possibly surpassing the number of PC and laptop users in the world. The advantage of using a phone to access the Internet is its convenience and low energy consumption, whether traveling, on the street or at home, users often tend to use mobile devices for personal movements rather than computers. Especially when 3G, 4G and WiFi networks develop strongly in Vietnam, the trend of users of smartphones and mobile devices is increasing.
In addition, the cost of mobile phones is getting cheaper and more accessible to a wider range of users. Therefore, designing websites for phones and mobile devices is catching up with the new trend of Internet users today.
Bringing better user experiences
Designing a mobile website or a mobile version website helps to provide a better user experience, thereby creating a good impression of users on your website and brand. Convenience is always one of the top criteria of today’s busy life, and when using a phone to access a website, users want the simplest operations, the most convenient navigation, and the most convenient information to display quickly and conveniently for observation.
Selling more effectively on mobile
If you are looking for a solution to expand your customer segment and reach potential customers effectively, designing a website for phones and mobile devices is an important requirement. A mobile-friendly website that displays well on mobile phones or tablets not only increases the user experience, but certainly makes stores and businesses score points with users and attracts a good number of consumers thanks to the ability to quickly and conveniently buy goods right on the phone screen. Besides, mobile website design is also the channel for implementing the most effective online advertising and marketing campaigns today.
Better interaction and connection with customers
For stores, businesses, website design for smartphones and mobile devices also helps to better interact and connect with customers because the phone is not only a tool to connect to the Internet but it also has the ability to connect with customers as making calls or sending messages quickly and conveniently through popular tools such as Facebook, Zalo, Viber, Skype… Therefore, if your online sales website integrates phone numbers or tools with an online contact tool, customers can contact for advice or purchase with just a few simple steps.
Optimizing your website for SEO standards
Mobile Friendly is one of the criteria for Google to rank websites on the world’s largest search engine. With the new algorithm, Google prioritizes websites with phone- and tablet-friendly interfaces, and sites that are less mobile-friendly can be pushed down the search page when users search on phones and tablets. Therefore, designing a website for mobile phones also helps optimize your website for SEO standards and increase traffic for your website. Besides, it also helps to reduce page loading fashion.
Top 6 mobile-friendly website design tips
Top 6 mobile-friendly website design tips (link ảnh)
In this section, we will take a closer look at 6 mobile website design tips that you can use.
Developing a responsive layout
In the past, when the website design technology for mobile devices had not really developed, mobile websites were often designed separately with subdomains such as mobile.abc.com or m. abc.com. These solutions cost money and resources. Now website design for mobile devices has taken a new step thanks to an advanced cross-platform display technology called Responsive Web Design that helps optimize the process of website interface design.
A responsive layout lets your website scale its size to fit the user’s device. Further, it can adapt to various screen sizes, displaying relevant content while changing design as needed, such as moving from a two-column layout on a desktop to a one-column design on a mobile device.
Owning a responsive website can improve search engine optimization, or SEO, because Google ranks websites that are mobile-friendly higher in search engine results. Further, Google’s algorithms use a mobile-rendered version of web pages instead of using desktop views when ranking sites.
Using recommended size dimensions for mobile
On a mobile device, space can feel more limited than in any other design context. But taking size constraints into consideration at the start of your project is the best way to avoid conflicts later on.
Mobile screen resolutions may vary by device, but 360×640 (aspect ratio 9:16) is considered as the most commonly used one. Further, Google Analytics may tell you which specific devices your users favor, thereby you should make sure your website design is responsive enough to accommodate variations.
In addition, when adding images to your website, do not forget to compress images to limit the file size and help with downloading speed. Further, use proper image formats, such as JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, AVIF and WebP, which all result in smaller file sizes than JPEGs and PNGs of similar quality.
Simplifying and Minimizing Menu
Desktop website menus have a lot of space and they can take up an entire bar at the top of the screen with extensive drop-down options, all without hindering the user experience. However, this isn’t the case on mobile devices – there just isn’t enough space.
Thereby, mobile-friendly websites should use a simple menu that presents an overview of the website. Thus, users can then use categories, filters, or the search feature to hone in on what they’re looking for.
Further, depending on how complex your menu is, each menu option may contain more nested options, or a submenu. When the user clicks into one of these submenus, it is best to have the new list of options replace the existing menu in order to keep the list short.
Providing a Simple and Intuitive Search Feature
The website’s search feature is especially important to mobile users. As mentioned above, a simplified menu can make mobile browsing easier, but they can also make it more difficult for users to find a specific item. To make it effortless for users to find what they want, place the search feature front-and-center.
Using HTML5 instead of Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is popular for animations; however, it is not supported by mobile devices. Thus, you should use HTML5 instead of Flash on your websites. In particular, HTML5 can let you do many actions online without using browser plugins. You can embed movies and music as well as create animations using HTML5, which is supported by mobile devices.
Testing the website on mobile devices regularly
In order to make sure your website is mobile-friendly, there are multiple ways to test. First, you can test websites on mobile devices for user experience. Be sure to test using both Android and iOS devices. Further, you can also run the website through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, which is free to use. Don’t forget to test often, especially after any website updates.
Conclusion
A mobile-friendly website is still a hot trend for website designers. Now, the world is mobile-first, your website should be too. Hopefully, the important information about mobile website design is useful for you and business. Further, the tips about building a mobile-friendly website may give you a baseline for practical solutions and it takes a lot of care and practice to master them. Good luck!
