The Smartphone. Man’s best friend in 2019. No one leaves their home without it. We use it for ordering presents, seeing what our friends and family are up to, getting fit and tracking our calorie consumption. Our smartphones provide us the ability to navigate to our destination or find the answers to most of our questions, all within the palm of our hands. Research says that about 81% of Americans own a smartphone and on average adults spend about 3 hours per day just browsing through social media apps. In 2018, 52.2% of web browsing was done through mobile devices. All of this is an experience and experience; especially good experience is vital. Great user experience may bring a religious following to a specific product or brand, but the opposite experience will bring bad reviews, which is why we must ensure that when our customers visit our site, we provide them with a great experience. How does one do that? By creating a great mobile version of your site.
Creating a mobile version of your site
Responsive sites have been around since late 2008/early 2009, but “What is a responsive site?” you might ask. A responsive site is one that is able to be viewed with ease, no matter the size of your screen. Whether you are on a desktop or on your smartphone, a responsive website will “size itself down” and provides visitors with easy readability. Give your visitors a great experience by making sure that your site is responsive. There are a few things to keep in mind when creating a mobile-friendly version of your site.
Font Size
The average font size for body copy in mobile view should be no less than 16pt. The height and width may vary depending on the font you’re using, but in general, it should be large enough so that your visitor won’t have a hard time reading your content. Finding out how big your text will look on screen is as easy as visiting sites that provide fonts (like Google Fonts) and using their free sizing feature to see exactly how big the font looks on your screen.
Spacing
Especially on the homepage, the way you layout your content should be done with a lot of thought. You want to make sure that each section is “packaged” neatly so that your content doesn’t look like a run on sentence. Make sure that each section is broken down and it is easy for your web visitor to distinguish where one section ends and another begins. You can do this by using blocks to separate each section, using your H2 and H3 headings correctly and when it’s needed, or adding a nice white space between each section. Avoid adding too much space though, as your visitors will have to scroll far more than needed to find the content they’re looking for.
Make sure your search works.
Mobile sized screens mean less room for visibility, which means people could miss your content. Make sure your search feature is easily accessible and is working correctly. Before launching your site, make sure your search feature works.
Well-Sized Images
Well-sized images are important on desktop view, and they are even more important on mobile view. The smaller your file size is (in kbs), the faster it loads on the screen. You should aim for your pages to load entirely in 3-4 seconds to ensure your bounce rate percentage remains low (bounce is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing one page.)
Good Interaction
You might not have heard of micro-interactions, but I’m 100% sure you’ve experienced them. They are the neat, little features that some sites have that make it a little more interesting browsing through the site and their only purpose is to make your visitors happy. Examples of micro-interactions are an image moving when you slide over it, a visually appealing “loading” animation, or text sliding into place when you navigate to that section of the web page. Creating a successful, smooth interaction, in turn, ensures that your visitor has a great mobile experience. When it’ a good interaction people will hardly notice it (which is part of a great experience), but when it’s bad, visitors will definitely notice.
In a fast-paced world where recipes, car rides, and even dates are obtained within minutes, you need to make sure that your company stays on top of the trends. Taking the small step of making your site mobile friendly is the first step in keeping pace with the ever-changing mobile experience.