The future is mobile. While people will always need traditional desktop and laptop computers in some capacity, every year smartphones and tablets are becoming more powerful, more capable and more common. Every year, more and more people are doing things on their mobile devices they weren’t doing before. Making purchases, videoconferencing, even working on spreadsheets.
This means that if you want to stay competitive in a marketplace where a growing number of users will be on mobile devices, you have to optimize your website for them if you haven’t already done so. Whether you’re just setting out, or you want to know if your business’s website is in fact fully optimized, it can be difficult to know what this means exactly.
To help you understand why you need to optimize for mobile, we’ve prepared this easy-to-understand overview of the specific mobile features you should be accounting for in your efforts.
What to account for when you optimize for mobile
As you probably know from personal experience, accessing and using a website offers a different user experience on a mobile device than it does on a desktop computer. Mobile devices have the following differentiators that mobile optimizers need to design for:
- Smaller screens — One of the key aspects of optimizing for mobile is making sure that text and pictures are readable and viewable on a smaller mobile screen without the user having to pinch, zoom and scroll.
- Different user interfaces — Where desktops and laptops have keyboards and a mouse or pointer, mobile devices have touch screens and are more likely to use voice commands. Mobile optimization should mean making sure all basic functions can use the different interfaces.
- Less powerful hardware and slower connections — While they are getting faster every year, mobile devices are still typically less powerful than desktops. They are also generally connected by way of slower connections. This means that mobile optimized sites should have properly formatted images and functions so that they still offer a good user experience.
- Different operating systems and applications — To ensure functionality on different platforms, developers should test basic site functions on mobile to ensure that everything works for users.
Burg & Co. can help you optimize for mobile
Need help optimizing for mobile? Our experts can help. Learn more about our full range of digital services, including search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, content marketing and social media marketing by contacting us today.
