Having a mobile-friendly website is a must in today’s digital world.

With a large number of users preferring to search for businesses on their mobile device than on desktops, not having a mobile-friendly site could jeopardise the conversion rate of your website.

In fact, a case study on Moz found that redesigning a website to be responsive (optimised for mobiles, tablets and desktops) boosted its conversion rate by 15% and its search engine rankings improved, resulting in a 25% increase in organic traffic.

However, simply shrinking the size of your website for mobile devices isn’t enough. In order for your website to have the best chances of success on mobile devices, we have put together the following checklist:

1. Responsive design – There are several options available to make your website optimised for mobile devices. However, Google recommends responsive layouts.
2. No Pop-ups – Google is not big fans of pop-ups on mobile websites as they can spoil the user experience.
3. Optimise Images – A fantastic looking website does come with a drawback – images. Why? Images tend to be large in terms of data size. Large web pages tend to take longer to load. However, by compressing your images, you decrease the size of them and therefore decrease the load time.
4. Hosting – Load time is important to Google and users. A slow loading website ruins the user experience. Selecting a web host that can provide your website with the resources it needs to help it load fast is important.
5. Caching – Caching is the process of storing data. For websites, caching works by storing web files temporarily on your device to help with the website’s load time. Google themselves recommend caching your site as it helps improve the user experience.
6. Remove Flash – Flash is not supported by mobile devices. If you are continuing to use Flash on your website, the Flash elements will not be displayed on mobile devices which will harm the user experience.
7. Font size – It is recommended that the size of the font on your mobile website is at least 14px.
8. Use of negative space – Having buttons or links too close together will frustrate your visitors. Using negative space on mobiles will help your web pages look less cluttered and will aid the user experience by allowing visitors to navigate your website with ease.