Mobile Optimization: A Webmaster’s Biggest Priority
Why do SEOs highly focus on mobile optimization these days? The first reason is the higher use of mobile internet over desktop usage. More than half of the worldwide consumer traffic to top sites is from people using smartphones. It certainly varies greatly depending on the business but is important at every location. Secondly, more smartphone searches are conducted, as Google states, as compared to desktop computers.
Google has therefore shifted to a “mobile-first index.” The search engine now uses the mobile version of a website for priority indexing. In other words, the ranking of the mobile version of sites is better as compared to desktop ones. The highest aim is to satisfy mobile consumers. They care how the website deals with their mobile guests before giving a good rating. Mobile search is critical not just because of the majority of smartphone users, but also because Google and Bing employ mobile search for a ranking signal.
How to Optimize a Site for Mobile Users – Tools and Tricks
The next thing is how to make your website mobile-friendly. We will look at some of the key concepts of the mobile priority design and see how they should be best utilized.
1. Keep Mobile Design in Mind
The web is mostly based on desktop users’ concepts. A stunning full-screen display shows the actual web, which is a genuine technological advancement. Smartphones and other mobile devices are another thing, however, and it is time to begin adjusting to the mobile design concept. In addition to sensitive design, what other design aspects should you incorporate in your initial mobile site designs?
Prioritization
The available display area is restricted to mobile displays. The content of mobile devices is vertical, much different from the layout on desktops, which is considerably broader and more horizontal. This means that the priority must be in a vertical design orientation. What are the most important components that users need to see? How simple is it to notice them for mobile users if there is a call to action (CTA) buttons?
First Content, Then Color
With the desktop design, you can achieve something interesting with the large real estate available on larger screens, but not as much with mobile design. The first focus should be on the information, making the text easy to read and fast to load.
Next, make sure that the contrasting colors are working for a mobile device. This means that having good white space with colors that are easily distinguishable for CTAs and links helps the user find where you want them to go and what you want them to do next.
Easy Browsing
Since mobile browsing needs to be straightforward, having a clear path to the objective must be thought of when designing a mobile-first site. Scroll to top widgets is a great way to help users navigate around. Having a sticky menu that stays on the page, or starts to appear when the users scroll up is also helpful to allow the users to navigate around.
The best method to check if you do this is to use your phone and visit your site. Take a careful look at the feeling and flow of things. Gently ask somebody to check your site if you are sitting or waiting on a flight at a café in the airport. Then sit down and listen to the remarks. This type of feedback can be great to allow you to optimize the site for the user.
2. Optimizing Resources, Pictures, Icons, etc.
How frequently do you use graphics for personal taste rather than UX? It happens, and if you are creative, it is useful to grasp how optimization of individual media works. The greatest user in the bandwidth of websites is visual components such as photographs, drawings, symbols, and videos.
While there is not a fixed web page size, it is common knowledge that loading times are faster for smaller web pages. How can you reduce your graphic content by quite a bit by resizing, compressing, and optimizing the image for web use? There are also plugins that assist with this, or you can do each image as you create the files.
File Type
JPG and PNG are the two most popular file formats for websites. JPGs are the most often used for photos and other images. A PNG is perfect where you have a transparent background, such as logos.
GIFs are used for animations and are popular for images you need to change or want to catch the user’s attention. GIFs are also popular in the meme world and can be used on your website, but use them sparingly.
Resize Images
Resizing images to use the smallest proportions that look good on all devices, desktop, and mobile. This means we are no longer in a setup where a 1980 x 1200 pixel format is required on any image other than maybe a banner image. Up to 80 percent of the entire picture size can be cut down according to the specifications you want.
Compress Images
Image compression/optimization is the process through which third-party software is used to decrease the number of colors. You can accomplish this to the extent that your photographs don’t lose their intrinsic quality but can dramatically reduce their file size. I have loved using TinyPNG for individual images, or a plugin such as SEOPressor or Imagify for my WordPress site.
3. Pre-Load and Lazy Load
Since not all media elements are required at the initial stage of the website load, we are able to pre-load or lazy load various elements without impacting the user experience. As a user scrolls, loading various elements will lower the load on the site and allow for a better and faster user experience.
Let’s first look at pre-loaders, sometimes referred to as browser hints. Pre-loaders are techniques to inform your browser of possible navigation possibilities. For example, from page A, a person might access Page B. User may run page B before clicking on the browser link on page A using preload. Be aware that preloading may not always function, and the ultimate choice must be made by the browser.
4. Caching Websites
The notion of duplicating web caching is based on the version of a page that you may subsequently submit to the user at any moment. The first time you visit a website, web pages will be cached. If a new user attempts to visit that page, the webserver will display the cached version instead of providing the live version.
The objective of any type of caching is to increase the speed of the website and reduce the necessary backend resources. You can adjust individual intervals and other trigger-based events depending on your caching solution.
5. Accelerated Mobile Pages
Google’s AMP initiative is like using steroids! AMP removes the extras on the websites to give a very quick loading experience, but also to prioritize content readability. Because page speed is so crucial, why would you say no to this extra boost to your site? could you get the guts to say no to the extras for almost instantaneous load times?
Conclusion
Even though it may seem like a difficult task to optimize your website for a good mobile experience, it really isn’t at all if you pay attention at the beginning stages. All you need is some decisiveness, and to apply the described approaches readily as explained above. You may know stuff like content caching and slow loading, but what about pre-loaders or staging environments? Hopefully, this illuminated the current situation of optimizing mobile websites. In the end, experiment with the website and consider it from the eyes of the consumers to gain the most benefit.
