4 Tips For Optimizing Your Site for Mobile Viewers

The art of optimizing a website for great mobile viewing is more than transferring information. It involves understanding what your viewers value and how a smartphone works. Here are four tips to success:

1. Organize by Content Need and Importance

Since space is limited, you should treat your mobile site as a starting over point. You aren’t just modifying content for a smaller space, you are deciding what information is most important to your viewers. Put that content first, in the most prominent place. Clearly label your content and create smaller, more concise pages for important information.

Also, since some phones can’t scroll very well, make every page as simple and concise as possible. While scrolling up and down isn’t so bad, scrolling side to side is much more difficult. The smaller the page, the better. If you have too much content for one page, try putting it on a different page or eliminating it altogether.

2. Don’t Use Pop-Up Windows

Pop-up windows have to be some of the most annoying things you can include on a mobile site. Unlike with a computer screen, a pop up takes up the entire phone screen. Also unlike with a computer, it is harder to press the exit button with pop ups. Instead of using pop ups for things such as maps or images, try embedding the link so that it is can be seen and viewed within the webpage.

3. Make Everything Readable

When looking to optimize a site for mobile viewers, choose a very readable font and make your default font size 14 pts. It might seem big, but it will be easier for mobile viewers to read. Different phones handle zoom differently, so this font ensures that all phones can read your content, not just those with a big screen and awesome zoom capabilities.

4. Avoid Common Mistakes

It’s easy to make a mistake when creating mobile content. Two common mistakes are busy sites and inconsistent sites. Busy sites have pages with too many images, and backgrounds. Their layers load slower, meaning users get impatient waiting for your site. Slow-loading sites are even more of a pain on mobile devices. As faster 4G services such as www.clearwirewimax4G.com/ become increasingly available, users will expect mobile websites to load faster. By keeping the pages simple, your mobile website will load better on all devices.

Inconsistent site leave users without a clear way back to the homepage, which can get users lost and frustrated browsing your site. Always have a home button and a menu so users know where they are and how to get to where they want to be. Keep the basic frame and color scheme of the page the same, too. This includes having a small header and side bar. If the layout of every page is different, users can’t get a feel for how the pages work together.